To stand in the shadow
of the scar up in the air.
To stand-for-no-one-and-nothing.
Unrecognized,
for you alone.
With all there is room for in that,
even without
language.
Philip Levine, from “Gospel”
(via the-final-sentence)
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
"I have a word for it—
the way the surface waited all day
to be a silvery pause between sky and city—
which is elver.
— Eavan Boland, opening lines to “Cityscape”
(Source: apoetreflects)
Of Being
I know this happiness
is provisional:
the looming presences—
great suffering, great fear—
withdraw only
into peripheral vision:
but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:
this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:
this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:
— Denise Levertov
(Source: fourteenth, via journalofanobody)
