pencil sketch by e.e.cummings

...
A bird the size

of a leaf fills

the whole lucid

evening with

his note, and flies.

...

~ Wendell Berry

An eye is meant to see things.

The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: for loving a true love.

Legs: to run after.

 

Love is vanishing into the sky.  The mind,

for learning what men have done and tried to do.

Mysteries are not to be solved.  The eye goes blind

when it only wants to see why.

 

A lover is always accused of something.

But when he finds his love, whatever was lost

in the looking comes back completely changed.

 

~ Rumi

The Bright Field

.

...

I have seen the light break through

to illuninate a small field

for a while and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great prize, the one field that had

the treasure in it.  I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.  Life is not hurrying

...

on to a receding future not handering after

an imagined past, It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush. To a brightness

that seems as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

...

~ R. S. Thomas

.

a divine stream

Your body is a divine stream,
as is your spirit.

When your two great rivers merge, one voice is found

and the earth applauds
in excitement.

Shrines are erected to those songs
the hand and heart have sung
as they serve
the world
with a love, a love
we cherish.





~ St. John of the Cross

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life

.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, 

to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, 

to cut a broad swath and shave close,

 to drive life into a corner, 

and reduce it to its lowest terms, 

and, if it proved to be mean, 

why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, 

and publish its meanness to the world;

 or if it were sublime,

 to know it by experience, 

and be able to give a true account of it.

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~ Henry David Thoreau

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no going back

.

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over a grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

~ Wendell Berry

Worn to brightness, this

Worn to brightness, this

bowl opens outward

to the world, like

the marriage of a pair

we sometimes know.

Filled full, it holds

no greedily. Empty,

it fills with light 

that is Heaven's and

its own. It holds

forever for a while.

~ Wendell Berry

the emporers new clothes

...
Everyone lives in his own fantasy world, but most people don't understand that. No one perceives the real world. Each person simply calls his private, personal fantasies the Truth. The difference is that I know I live in a fantasy world. I prefer it that way and resent anything that disturbs my vision.


...
~ Federico Fellini
 
.

you speak to me in italics

you speak to me in italics
slanting your thoughts deep into me
you come at me from an angle
impaling me on the point of desire
you lean towards me like a tree in the wind
each leaf inscribed with the same word
I have never met your type before
yet I can read you like a book




~ Andre Ramier

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remember?

Harlan: And so we named a day -- remember? --
          and a certain train that you would be on
          if you wanted to marry me,
Anna:                                   and that you
         would be on if you wanted to marry me,
Both: and both of us were on the train!
Anna: And then, Harlan, we did drift away
Harlan: on a little boat we built ourselves,
          that contained hardly more than our music,
          our stove, our table, and our bed
Anna: in which we slept -- and did not sleep -
Harlan: my birthplace into our new life!


~ Wendell Berry

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the kiss

...
My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!
...
Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see -- Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!
...
Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
...
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.
...
~ Anne Sexton

Come to my garden walk, my love

...

Come to my garden walk, my love. Pass by the fervid flowers that

press themselves on your sight. Pass them by, stopping at some

chance joy, which like a sudden wonder of sunset illumines, yet

eludes.

...

For a lover's gift is shy, it never tells its name, it flits

across the shade, spreading a shiver of joy along the dust.

Overtake it or miss it forever. But a gift that can be

grasped is merely a frail flower, or a lamp with a flame that will

flicker.

...

Rabindranath Tagore

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The Elephant is Slow To Mate

The elephant, the huge old beast,
     is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
     they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
     slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
     and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
     of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
     together, without a word.
 

 So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
     grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
     hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
     so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
     for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
     their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
     till they touch in flood.

D.H. Lawrence

Because the woman i love lives inside you,

I lean as close to your body with my words as i can-

and I think of you all the time..

 

~ Hafiz

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