I subsidenudged by the softeningdriftwood of your body,tangle on you like a water-weed caughton a submerged tree limb with sleep like a swampgrowing, closing around me — Margaret Atwood, from “Pre-Amphibian,” The Circle Game (Contact Press, 1966)
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
Trust me. This darkness is a place you can enter and be as safe in as you are everywhere; […] Memorize it. You will know it again in your own time. When the appearances of things have left you, you will still have this darkness. Something of your own you can carry with you. —… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
Late night and rain wakes me, a downpour,wind thrashing in the leaves, hugeears, huge feathers,like some chased animal, a giantdog or wild boar. Thunder & shiveringwindows; from the tin roofthe rush of water. I lie askew under the net,tangled in damp cloth, salt in my hair.When this clears there will be fireflies& stars, brighter than… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
…we thought we were talkingabout a certain lightthrough the window of an empty room,a light beyond the wet black trunksof trees in this leafless forestjust before spring,a certain loss. —Margaret Atwood, from “Two-Headed Poems,” Two-Headed Poems. (Simon & Schuster March 9, 1981)
How can one live with such a heart?Long ago I gave up singing to it,it will never be satisfied or lulled.One night I will say to it:Heart, be still,and it will. — Margaret Atwood, from “The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart,” Selected Poems II (1976-1986). (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987)
Here is the handfulof shadow I have brought back to you:this decay, this hope, this mouth-ful of dirt, this poetry. — Margaret Atwood, from “Mushrooms,” True Stories. (Simon & Schuster (Paper); First Edition edition September 1982)
The cosmos unravels from my mouth,all fullness, all vacancy. —Margaret Atwood, from “Half-hanged Mary,” Morning in the Burned House. (Mariner Books; Reprint edition September 16, 1996)
At the point where language falls awayfrom the hot bones, at the pointwhere the rock breaks open and darknessflows out of it like blood, atthe melting point of granitewhen the bones knowthey are hollow & the wordsplits & doubles & speaksthe truth & the bodyitself becomes a mouth. This is a metaphor. — Margaret Atwood,… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
The heart … this fist which goes onshaking itself at fate. — Margaret Atwood, from “Heart Test with an Echo Chamber,” Interlunar. (Oxford University Press; First Edition edition 1984)
The Vale of Soul-Making 