+ "
i
In view of the fading animals
the proliferation of sewers and fears
the sea clogging, the air
nearing extinction
we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other
Instead we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking,
the gifts we bring
even in good faith maybe
warp in our hands to
implements, to manoeuvres
ii
Put down the target of me
you guard inside your binoculars,
in turn I will surrender
this aerial photograph
(your vulnerable
sections marked in red)
I have found so useful
See, we are alone in
the dormant field, the snow
that cannot be eaten or captured
iii
Here there are no armies
here there is no money
It is cold and getting colder,
We need each others’
breathing, warmth, surviving
is the only war
we can afford, stay
walking with me, there is almost
time / if we can only
make it as far as
the (possibly) last summer
"
—
Margaret Atwood, “They are hostile nations”
+
Philippe Rousseau, A Valley (detail), ca. 1860
(via sophistae)
+
I wish I could grow outside my skin sometimes, pack bags, spread wings.
I equally yearn for the metaphorical and the literal.
+ "That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it."
—
Joan Didion, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem
+ "I wish I wrote the way I thought
Obsessively
Incessantly
With maddening hunger
I’d write to the point of suffocation
I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns
Manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing
And I’d write about you
a lot more
than I should"
—
Benedict Smith, “I Wish I Wrote The Way I Thought” (via borderofthesea)
+ "Every day the sun rises
out of low word-clouds
into burning silence."
—
Rumi, from “Secret Places”, translated by Coleman Barks
Posted on the-final-sentence
+ "Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty."
—
Rumi, opening lines to “Secret Places”, in Bridge to the Soul, translated by Coleman Barks
+ "What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?"
—
Philip Larkin, from “Days”
+ "I didn’t choose poetry: poetry chose me."
—
Philip Larkin(Source: theparisreview)
