February 2012
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“Know —
Your hand is a star.
Your blood is famous in your heart.”
– Carol Ann Duffy, from “Gesture”
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Voix
Voices by DS, translated by Mathilde Deleval
~
Combien de fois dans une vie doit une personne enfouir son coeur et l’exhumer?
Je veux revenir comme une feuille et tomber, dit-elle. Resteras-tu avec moi?
Tu es tellement semblable à l’homme que j’ai aimé.
~
How many times in a life must a person bury her heart and exhume it?
I want to come back as a leaf and fall, she says. Will you...
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“Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.
You...”
– “End of Winter” by Louise Glück
I had this in my drafts folder for ages and felt like posting it now. Even though it’s not the end of Winter yet, today was the first warm day for a long time and it felt very much like Spring.
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“Look”, Mother Says by Anna Kamieńska (read by me...
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“The work of an unknown good man is like a vein of water flowing hidden...”
– Thomas Carlyle
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a sky that's Miles Davis's kind blue
my fingers chase a rhythm consecutively. one by one, they follow a note or two without you nor I knowing that my feet moved and my jacket found my back too.
my fingers chased a cloud and left you (a sky that’s Miles Davis’s kind blue).
…
It doesn’t rain enough to warm us here, It doesn’t rain enough to keep us from here.
my fingers chase a rhythm they can’t hear.
by vulgivagus
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(A friend send this to me)
Events and births on the 22nd February
Events
1632: Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
1848 : The French Revolution of 1848, which would lead to the establishment of the French Second Republic, begins.
1943: Members of the White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany.
1997: In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an...
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22nd February 1989
(From an old birthday card)
My little darling (one of the three),
Birthdays are especially important for you children. Proudly you present your fingers indicating your age, proclaiming with your head held up high, “I am five years old!”
For me as your mother this day will always be connected with the day of your birth - every pain, every second, the waiting for you: Wednesday,...
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“I don’t trust the truth of memories
because what leaves us
departs...”
– Anna Kamieńska, from “A Path in the Woods”, first poem in Astonishments, translated by G. Drabik and D. Curzon
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“1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where...”
– “Bone” by Mary Oliver
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Some things I like
Small bookshops, buying (too many) books, reading, discovering and listening to music (new and old), fresh fruit and vegetables, cooking (I rarely follow recipes), good red wine, “Apfelschorle”, proper bread, looking at and taking photographs (both film and digital), languages, words, figures of speech, Dutch bicycles, cycling, walking, traveling, being at...
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“I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry… I believe poetry is a...”
– Stephen Fry, from The Ode Less Travelled
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“A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached...”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, from Wartime Writings: 1939-1944, translated by Norah Purcell (with thanks to hateshiploveship)
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“This is the silence of astounded souls.”
– Sylvia Plath, from “Crossing the Water”
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“I look up — as if to meet your voice
With all its urgent future
That has...”
– Ted Hughes, from “Visit”, in Birthday Letters
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you can’t remember something that you don’t know findings are not always things that were lost
by Marion
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“How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the...”
– “No Words Can Describe It” by Mark Strand
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“O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind voller Weltraum
uns am Angesicht...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The First Elegy”, in Duino Elegies, translated by E. Snow
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“… I remember everything simultaneously;
Like the distant beam of a...”
– Anna Akhmatova, from “Creation”, translated by J. Hemschemeyer
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“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living...”
– “53” by E. E. Cummings
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“Snow and after, each bidding
and restlessness turns the goat’s heart
fallow:...”
– “Inclement” by Allison Titus (with thanks to yesyes)
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“A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.
An additional...”
– Wisława Szymborska, from “A Miracle”
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“How blue is the the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable...”
– Mary Oliver, from “One”, in Wild Geese
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“Morning-fresh
book of poetry,
return
again
to hold snow and moss
on your...”
– Pablo Neruda, from “Ode to the Book II”, translated by S. Mitchell
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“To write incorporeal poems, almost without words. To approximate the impossible...”
– Anna Kamieńska, from The Notebook (1973), in Astonishments, translated by G. Drabik and D. Curzon
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Skúffuskáld
is an Icelandic word which describes someone who is secretly a poet. It literally means “drawer poet”, someone who writes poetry but puts it all into a desk drawer instead of sharing it with other people.
(with thanks to icelandiclanguage)
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Wabi-sabi
represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience.
Asymmetry, asperity, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes—”if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to...
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“I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the...”
– “Homage to Claudio Ptolemy” by Octavio Paz, translated by E. Weinberger
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A crack in the skin, a bud that wasn’t meant to grow, inside a never ending Spring of a thousand memories of you and me.
A crack in your eye, the things you can not see, only to hold as close as an almost forgotten dream, the words stuck in your throat.
I am here and I have not been anywhere else.
Write me a letter, or just a note, tell me a story or a secret?
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“Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined
future, of being...”
– “The Old Age of Nostalgia” by Mark Strand
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“… Like birds that get used to walking
and become heavier and heavier, as...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Fragments of Lost Days”, in The Book of Images, translated by E. Snow
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Place to Be by Nick Drake (from Pink Moon,...
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“Orpheus
When I wrote of the women in their dances and
wildness, it was...”
– “The Poem as Mask” by Muriel Rukeyser
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“Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you...”
– “The Wild Rose” by Wendell Berry
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“Whatever one can say, no words express the whole. To speak of partial aspects is...”
– Carl Gustav Jung, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, “Late Thoughts,” III, pp. 353–354 (with thanks to anhypnic)