I carry silence with me
the way others carry snapshots
of loved ones.  I offer it
and wait for a response.

—Stephen Dunn

"Lightly, lightly, very lightly,
A wind passes very lightly
And goes away, always very lightly.
And I don’t know what I think
And I don’t want to know."

— Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), Complete poems (via 1109-83)

“When a life is over,
the one you were living for,
where do you go?”

Anne Sexton “Killing the Love”

Happiness is simple.Sadness forks into many roads.


From Spaces by Arkaye Kierulf

     “A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
              but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
                     but then he’s still left with his hands.”

—	Richard Siken, "Boot Theory"

     “It is June. I am tired of being brave.”

Anne sexton,

The last time we went swimming
the sea stood up and hugged you
as though you were responsible
for keeping it blue

Bianca Stewart

I have a heart
My heart has a song
The song has a secret
And the secret is you. 


Leonid Utesov, Jazz Singer

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

 

Vera Pavlova

Empty Space

There were two kingdoms only:

the first of them threw out both him and me.

The second we abandoned.

Under a bare sky

I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,

he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.

He held my hand with a trembling hand.

“Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.

Look, further on ahead, there

between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”

Amrita Pritam

translated from the Punjabi by D.H. Tracy & Mohan Tracy

Clay: 24

He took a chair
out to the garden
watched the shadow
kicked a stone.
Most of all
of late
the words hate me.


Yannis Ritsos
Athens—January 18, 1978

Like the Leaves

Forgetting
is like leaves.


Some fall
others are born.


They stop being leaves
only when the tree
stops being a tree.

No One Belongs Here More Than You

"If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him."