« Enero 2005 | Main | Marzo 2005 »
Febrero 27, 2005
June Storm
Voices from the first dark heartshaped green of summer
leaves, rain;
birds'.
What are they called.
I'm leaving here, and still don't know.
I'm going there, though,
where they are--;
I feel this.
Feel that I was there
before.
I felt this
as a child, and now
I know it.
Franz Wright
Posted by sarita at 6:47 PM
Febrero 24, 2005
This is the true joy in life...
This is the true joy in life - to be used for a purpose recognized by you as a mighty one -being a force of nature instead of a selflish little clod of ailments complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole and as long as I live, it is my privilege, my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be used up when I die for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle for me, but it is a splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as bright as I possibly can before handing it on to future generations.
G. B. Shaw
Posted by sarita at 4:20 PM
Febrero 6, 2005
The plain fact is that the planet does not...
The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.
David Orr, from Earth in Mind
Posted by sarita at 9:40 AM
We work in the dark...
We work in the dark- we do what we can- we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
Henry James
Posted by sarita at 9:39 AM
If you're going to write...
If you're going to write you better have somewhere to come from.
Flannery O'Connor
Posted by sarita at 9:38 AM
Febrero 5, 2005
Empedocles on Etna
We would have inward peace,
Yet will not look within;
We would have misery cease,
Yet will not cease from sin;
Once, read your own heart right
And you will have done with fears;
Man gets no other light
Though he search a thousand years.
Matthew Arnold
Posted by sarita at 10:38 PM
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing...
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.
Rumi
Posted by sarita at 10:35 PM
Febrero 3, 2005
The most solid advice for a writer...
The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan
Posted by sarita at 10:23 PM
Red Right Ankle
This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed
And how it whispered “Oh, adhere to me
For we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb.”
This is the story of your red right ankle.
This is the story of your gypsy uncle
You never knew ‘cause he was dead
And how his face was carved and rift with wrinkles
In the picture in your head.
And remember how you found the key
To his hide-out in the Pyrenees
But you wanted to keep his secret safe
So you threw the key away.
This is the story of your gypsy uncle.
This is the story of the boys who loved you
Who love you now and loved you then
And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you
And some just laid around in bed.
Some had crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
This is the story of your red right ankle.
Posted by sarita at 9:47 PM
October
I.
Is it winter again, is it cold again,
didn't Frank just slip on the ice,
didn't he heal, weren't the spring seeds planted
didn't the night end,
didn't the melting ice
flood the narrow gutters
wasn't my body
rescued, wasn't it safe
didn't the scar form, invisible
above the injury
terror and cold,
didn't they just end, wasn't the back garden
harrowed and planted--
I remember how the earth felt, red and dense,
in stiff rows, weren't the seeds planted,
didn't vines climb the south wall
I can't hear your voice
for the wind's cries, whistling over the bare ground
I no longer care
what sound it makes
when was I silenced, when did it first seem
pointless to describe that sound
what it sounds like can't change what it is--
didn't the night end, wasn't the earth
safe when it was planted
didn't we plant the seeds,
weren't we necessary to the earth,
the vines, were they harvested?
II.
Summer after summer has ended,
balm after violence:
it does me no good
to be good to me now;
violence has changed me.
Daybreak. The low hills shine
ochre and fire, even the fields shine.
I know what I see: sun that could be
the August sun, returning
everything that was taken away--
You hear this voice? This is my mind's voice;
you can't touch my body now.
It has changed once, it has hardened,
don't ask it to respond again.
A day like a day in summer.
Exceptionally still. the long shadows of the maples
nearly mauve on the gravel paths.
And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer.
It does me no good; violence has changed me.
My body has grown cold like the stripped fields;
now there is only my mind, cautious and wary,
with the sense that it is being tested.
Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer;
bounty, balm after violence.
Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields
have been harvested and turned.
Tell me this is the future.
I won't believe you.
Tell me I'm living.
I won't believe you.
III.
Snow had fallen. I remember
music from an open window.
Come to me, said the world.
That is not to say
it spoke in exact sentences
but that I percieved beauty in this manner.
Sunrise. A film of moisture
on each living thing. Pools of cold light
formed in the gutters.
I stood
at the doorway,
ridiculous as it now seems.
What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in human love, I found in nature.
Very simple. But there was no voice there.
Winter was over. In the thawed dirt,
bits of green were showing.
Come to me, said the world. I was standing
in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal--
I can finally say
long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty
the healer, the teacher--
death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.
IV.
The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.
This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring.
The light of autumn, you will not be spared.
The songs have changed; the unspeakable
has entered them.
This is the light of autumn, not the light that says
I am reborn.
Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered; I was delievered.
This is the present, an allegory of waste.
So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate:
the ideal burns in you like a fever.
Or not like a fever, like a second heart.
The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful.
They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space
of the mind.
They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish.
And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly
in anticipation of silence.
The ear gets used to them.
The eye gets used to disappearances.
You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared.
A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind;
it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.
How privileged you are, to be still passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.
Maestoso, doloroso:
This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.
V.
It is true there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.
I am
at work, though I am silent.
The bland
misery of the world
bounds us on either side, an alley
lined with trees; we are
companions here, not speaking,
each with his own thoughts;
behind the trees, iron
gates of the private houses,
the shuttered rooms
somehow deserted, abandoned,
as though it were the artist's
duty to create
hope, but out of what? what?
the word itself
false, a device to refute
perception-- At the interesction,
ornamental lights of the season.
I was young here. Riding
the subway with my small book
as though to defend myself against
this same world:
you are not alone,
the poem said,
in the dark tunnel.
VI.
The brightness of the day becomes
the brightness of the night;
the fire becomes the mirror.
My friend the earth is bitter; I think
sunlight has failed her.
Bitter or weary, it is hard to say.
Between herself and the sun,
something has ended.
She wants, now, to be left alone;
I think we must give up
turning to her for affirmation.
Above the fields,
above the roofs of the village houses,
the brilliance that made all life possible
becomes the cold stars.
Lie still and watch:
they give nothing but ask nothing.
From within the earth's
bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness
my friend the moon rises:
she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
Louise Gluck
Posted by sarita at 9:39 PM
I say too much of what...
I say too much of what, he says too much of everything, too much stuff, too many places, too much information, too many people, too much of things for there to be too much of, there is too much to know and I don't know where to begin but I want to try.
from If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, by Jon McGregor.
Posted by sarita at 9:05 PM