Aubade There was one summerthat returned many times overthere was one flower unfurlingtaking many forms Crimson of the monarda, pale gold of the late roses There was one loveThere was one love, there were many nights Smell of the mock orange treeCorridors of jasmine and liliesStill the wind blew There were many winters but I… Continue reading Louise Glück
End of Winter Over the still world, a bird callswaking solitary among black boughs. You wanted to be born; I let you be born.When has my grief ever gottenin the way of your pleasure? Plunging aheadinto the dark and light at the same timeeager for sensation as though you were some new thing, wantingto express… Continue reading Louise Glück
You saved me, you should remember me. ― Louise Glück, from “Vita Nova,” Poems 1962-2012. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux November 5, 2013)
Hush, beloved. It doesn’t matter to me how many summers I live to return: this one summer we have entered eternity. — Louise Glück, from “The White Lilies,” The Wild Iris (Ecco, 1992)
Long, long ago, before I was a tormented artist, afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments, long before this, I was a glorious ruler uniting all of a divided country—so I was told by the fortune-teller who examined my palm. Great things, she said, are ahead of you, or perhaps behind you; it… Continue reading Louise Glück
Sooner or later you will call my name, cry of loss, mistaken cry of recognition, of arrested need for someone who exists in memory: no voice carries to that kingdom. — Louise Glück, from “Marathon,” The Triumph of Achilles. (Ecco Pr; First Edition edition May 1987)
You know, he said, our work is difficult: we confront much sorrow and disappointment. He gazed at me with increasing frankness. I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence. ― Louise Glück, from “Aboriginal Landscape,” Faithful and Virtuous Night: Poems. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1St Edition edition September 9, 2014)
I ask you, how much beauty can a person bear? It is heavier than ugliness, even the burden of emptiness is nothing beside it. — Louise Glück, from “Baskets,” Poems 1962-2012. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition, November 13, 2012)
Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room still waiting to be transformed. This is why we search for love. We search for it all our lives, even after we find it. — Louise Glück, from “An Endless Story,” The Threepenny Review (Summer 2018)
He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you’re dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true. — Louise Glück, from “A Myth of Devotion,” Averno:… Continue reading Louise Glück
