February 2012
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“Where do your dreams sleep now
where do your fears nest
where do your hungers...”
– “Where do your dreams sleep now” by Anna Kamieńska, translated by G. Drabik and D. Curzon, in Astonishments
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I don’t have many words and when I do have words, when I find them, I do not claim them as my own. I don’t think they are wise or good, I just let them be. I don’t search for metaphors or highbrowed adjectives, I just think that life means so much more than that.
I share these pieces because sometimes words come crashing out of me and I feel that if I don’t leave this...
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“You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. And you say that even...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet, translated by S. Mitchell
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“Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must...”
– Katherine Mansfield, from The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, edited by J. Middleton Murry
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“What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:...”
– Linda Pastan, from “What We Want”
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“I mean, to remember is like carving
coffins out of cedars and graffitiing a...”
– Ágnes Lehóczky, from “The Parchment Skin”
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“Oh where did all my words go —
my old words, my lost words?
Did you ever...”
– Jackie Kay, from “Old Tongue”
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“I have nothing to give you, nothing to carry,
some words to make me less...”
– Anne Michaels, from “Memoriam” (with thanks to hateshiploveship)
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“No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you...”
– “There is No Going Back” by Wendell Berry
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I am much less here sometimes, the city builds you inside its asphalt soul.
(I dream of mountains and the sea, of the wide unknown in front and deep within.)
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“Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting...”
– Queen Elizabeth I, from “On monsieur’s departure”
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“The poet, I said, is either nature or he will seek it.”
– Friedrich Schiller, from “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry” (with thanks to invisiblestories)
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“The strongest gift I was ever given
was made of twigs.
It didn’t matter which...”
– Dean Young, from “Handy Guide” (with thanks to gammasandgerunds)
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“… and you, man, orange afternoon
lover, wherever
you sit across from me...”
– Margaret Atwood, from “Against Still Life”
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“Love, in whatever sense of the word we please, must surely be the principal...”
– W. S. Merwin
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“Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never...”
– “Language” by W. S. Merwin
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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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