I am where I was: I walk behind the murmur, footsteps within me, heard with my eyes, the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps, I hear the voices that I think, the voices that think me as as I think them. I am the shadow my words cast. — Octavio Paz,… Continue reading Octavio Paz
In order to exist I hide behind stacks of red and blue poems And open little sensuous parasols — Bob Kaufman, from “Afterwards They Shall Dance,” Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness. (New Directions, January 17, 1965)
Desire is… Desire is the glow of bathing lunatics. Starlight is the liquid used to power a whispering machine. Humming is the music of a forest moving in unison with your eyes. * A slip of the tongue and the hummingbird’s empty throne make the acquaintance of the word frenzy, which in turn adopts the… Continue reading J. Karl Bogartte
your mouth tastes/ like poisoned time — Octavio Paz, from “Sunstone,” Octavio Paz, The Collected Poems, 1957-1987. Edited and translated by Eliot Weinberger. (New Directions, April 17, 1991) Originally published 1987.
One word and all is saved One word and all is lost — André Breton, from “Unconscious,” Poems of André Breton: A Bilingual Anthology (University of Texas Press, 1982)
When the windows like the jackal’s eye and desire pierce the dawn, silken windlasses lift me up to suburban footbridges. I summon a girl who is dreaming in the little gilded house; she meets me on the piles of black moss and offers me her lips which are stones in the rapid river depths. Veiled… Continue reading André Breton
Unreadability of this world. All doubles. The strong clocks back the fissure-hour, hoarsely. You, wedged into your deepest, climb out of yourself for ever. — Paul Celan, “Unreadability,” Paul Celan: Selections. (University of California Press, March 14th 2005)
