March 2011
“
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
“Hot noon in the meadows. The buttercups
Swelter and melt, and the lovers
Pass by, pass by.
They are black and flat as shadows.
It is so beautiful to have no attachments!
I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?
Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?” —Three Women, Sylvia Plath (via unkemptgirl)
Swelter and melt, and the lovers
Pass by, pass by.
They are black and flat as shadows.
It is so beautiful to have no attachments!
I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?
Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?” —Three Women, Sylvia Plath (via unkemptgirl)
“Who am I, in fact, as I sit here at this table, but my own past?”
—~ Katherine Mansfield (via never-ending-journey)
“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (via fuckyeahfitzgerald)
My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer
by Mark Strand
1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon’s ash-colored coat
on the black bay.
2
Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour’s spell,
she will think how we yield each night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that brought her to this.
3
My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small creatures —
the mouse and the swift — will sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.
“I speak
because I am shattered.” —Louise Gluck, from The Red Poppy
because I am shattered.” —Louise Gluck, from The Red Poppy
Tumblr thanks
To all I follow here on Tumblr, to all who follow me, to all who continually enrich me and teach me new things, exposing me to new writers, artists, words, ideas—I am extremely thankful for your presence, your camaraderie, and your dialogue here. I am honored to be among you in this utterly poetic world we have here between us.
“Poems crystallize from the substance of time. A cluster of moments, like bees dangling from the hive’s mouth.”
—Anna Kamienska
He Feels Lucky by Anna Swirszczynska
The old man
leaves his house, carries books.
A German soldier snatches his books
flings them in the mud.
The old man picks them up,
the soldier hits him in the face.
The old man falls,
the soldier kicks him and walks away.
The old man
lies in mud and blood.
Under him he feels
the books.
“The weather is really exquisite. Today was perfection. Radiant, crystal clear, one of those days when the earth seems to pause, enchanted with its beauty, when every new leaf whispers: “am I not heavenly fair!” The sun is quite warm. It is tame again. It comes & curls up in your arms. Beautiful Life! In spite of everything one cannot but praise Life. I have been watching the peach tree outside my window from the very first moment, and now it is all in flowers and the leaves are come, small stiff clusters like linnets wings.”
—Katherine Mansfield (via katherine-mansfield)
“You don’t know it, but I often wake up at night,
I lie for a long time in the dark,
and I listen to you sleeping next to me, as a dog does,
on the shore of slow water from which shadows
and reflections rise, silent butterflies.
Last night you spoke in your sleep,
almost whining, talking of a wall
too high to climb down, towards the sea
seen only by you, distant and gleaming.
Playfully I whispered, Just calm down,
it isn’t all that high, we could make it.
You asked
whether down below there was sand to land on,
or black rock.
Sand, I answered, sand. And in your dream
maybe we dove together.”
— Fabio Pusterla, “Sand” (from the inaugural issue of Asymptote)
How do you feel about e-readers? Love them, hate them, or undecided?
“
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and too numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
” —Sylvia Plath, from “A Birthday Present”
“I love a room that is a fortress and I love to work at night. To be free to get up and lean out of [the] window into that dark, airy stillness — is happiness. Dear Heaven! How little has been written about the extraordinary charm of NOT going to bed at night! Only to think of it and one passes into a whole strange world where to be awake is enough.”
—Katherine Mansfield (via katherine-mansfield)
Another Spring
The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.
The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.
The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.
O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever
Slide unconsciously by us like water.
—Kenneth Rexroth (From One Hundred Poems from the Chinese)Thank you, Beyond the Fields We Know.
