The Feast

Where Róisín Kelly’s Oranges burned with fierce, deliberate desire, Billy Collins’s While Eating a Pear steps into the quiet, almost hypnotic trance of taste itself. It anchors August’s theme of Feast, showing that abundance isn't always loud or demanding, sometimes it is simply slowing down to notice how a sweet, quiet moment can pause the entire world. By turning a simple fruit into a landscape of reflection, the poem reminds us that to feast is to let the present pull us completely into its fold. #poetry #existential #time #august #nature

Yesterday we covered From Blossoms where Li-Young Lee found sacred communion in the gift of sweet fruit; Róisín Kelly’s Oranges turns that same table toward intentional, fierce desire. It anchors August’s theme of Feast by showing that to choose what, and who we take into our lives is an act of sensory warmth, agency, and ritual. By leaving a trail of lamp-bright rind behind, the poem reminds us that true abundance is found when we select the sun for ourselves and let its sweetness linger. . #poetry #zine #oranges #feast #fruit

Li-Young Lee traces the path of a single peach from blossom to roadside stand, turning the act of eating fruit into a sacred, sensory communion with life itself. It anchors August's theme of Feast, showing that to taste something fully is to devour the sun, the rain, and the sweet, fleeting weight of being alive. By honoring the nectar of the everyday, the poem reminds us that every bite of summer is a quiet, joyful celebration of existence. . #poetry #nature #fruit #peach #blossom

Leah Naomi Green finds the heat of the sun hidden underground, turning a simple root into a stored ember of summer light. It anchors August's theme of Feast, showing that abundance isn't just what spills across the table, but the patient warmth gathered from the earth to sustain us. By honoring the quiet alchemy of nourishment, the poem reminds us that every humble, gathered meal holds an inner flame meant to be shared. . #poetry #summer #august #carrot #feast

Ada Limón sits with the tender, ripening weight of middle age, turning time into a feast of presence rather than a tally of loss. It anchors August's theme, showing that the real banquet is learning to inhabit the skin we are in, that is, messy, alive, and fully present. By leaning into the sensory warmth of becoming, the poem reminds us that to feast is to claim the sweetness of our own arrival. . #poetry #forty #birthday #life #spirit

No better way to kick this month off than by this poem by Joy Sullivan. The poem sinks into the sun-warmed, heavy flesh of August, where simple food and shared presence turn a humble garden yield into an unhurried banquet. It grounds August's theme of Feast, showing that abundance isn't found in grand, distant spectacles, but in the ripe, sensory joy already sitting on our kitchen counters. By celebrating the messy, tangible weight of being fully present, the poem reminds us that to feast is simply to let ourselves be nourished by the sweetness right in front of us. . #poetry #feast #tomato #summer #abundance

Le Guin traces the slow journey of the self, from a misty origin to a hard stone, until time finally lightens the soul enough to let go of its rigid ego. It offers a deeply comforting, spacious lightness for July, framing aging and letting go not as a loss, but as the ultimate release into freedom. By gently unburdening us from the heavy demand to maintain a fixed identity, the poem invites us to dissolve into the long, tranquil light after time. . #poetry #soul #time #life #ursulakleguin

Bishop watches a tiny shorebird darting across the tide, obsessively scanning the sand grains while taking the roaring ocean completely for granted. It brings a brilliant, detail-oriented lightness to July, showing how intense focus on the minute, immediate world can quiet the overwhelming noise around us. By finding a vast, clear universe in a single patch of wet sand, the poem reminds us that peace often begins when we narrow our gaze to where our feet actually touch the ground. . #poetry #elizabethbishop #beach #sandpiper #summer

Yeats turns toward a quiet, imagined island in Sligo, where a simple cabin of clay and wattles offers sanctuary from the gray pavement and urban noise. It brings a deeply tranquil lightness to July's theme, showing that peace isn't something we must travel far to find, but a quiet space we can carry within us wherever we go. By tuning into the soft water lapping with low sounds by the shore, the poem reminds us that true freedom begins when we listen to the deep heart’s core. #poetry #wbyeats #summer #island #night

Guillén distills the physical rush of movement into pure, weightless light, catching the exact instant where gravity dissolves and sky takes over. It brings a crisp, luminous elegance to July’s theme of lightness, showing that true freedom isn't an escape from reality, but an absolute, joyous immersion in the present moment. By elevating motion into pure form and air, the poem invites us to shed our earthbound heavy thoughts and simply soar. . #poetry #nature #bird #flight #sea

Machej traces the quiet, luminous journey of cold spring waters rising through dark roots into heavy summer fruit, ascending toward an endless blue sky. It perfectly embodies July's theme of lightness, framing natural growth as an effortless upward movement where earthbound weight naturally transforms into fluid air and sunlight. By celebrating this quiet ascent from soil to cloud, the poem invites us to let go of our own heavy roots and surrender to the open, luminous sky. . #nature #water #poetry #july #orchards

Levertov zeroes in on the delicate, icy touch of a red salamander moving across an open palm, using that fleeting moment to reveal how precious and fragile every single day really is. It grounds July’s theme of lightness in the gentle act of unclenching our hands and letting life pass through without trying to possess or hold on to it. By reminding us that each minute might be the last, the poem turns the quiet acceptance of impermanence into our sweetest, most liberating form of peace. #poetry #living #july #summer #nature

Szymborska zeroes in on that suspended, ghostly hour when night hasn't yet surrendered to day, capturing a quiet threshold where time itself seems to hold its breath. It brings a subtle, haunting lightness to July’s theme, reminding us that there is a brief moment every night when we exist entirely unburdened by the world's expectations and roles. By mapping this liminal space between sleeping and waking, the poem invites us to step into the unmeasured air of simple, unadorned existence. . #poetry #4am #5am #lightness #summer

Szymborska turns her razor-sharp irony onto the terrifying perfection of the natural world, where predators move with absolute, unbothered certainty while we are left carrying the quiet weight of human conscience. It fits seamlessly into July’s theme of lightness by suggesting that true freedom isn't about achieving a cold, unblemished peace of mind, but accepting our messy, second-guessing nature. By reminding us that even a killer whale’s heart weighs a hundred kilos, the poem invites us to unclench, laugh at our own heavy self-doubt, and step lightly into being human. #poetry #lightness #july #selfhelp #positivity

Kelly captures the quiet exhaustion of constant wanting demanding that our burnout turn into revolution, or our sadness into poetry only to be left holding the unglamorous weight of everyday life. It anchors July's theme of lightness by urging us to walk backward out of the heavy rooms we construct from our unmet desires and step simply into the room of where we actually are. By finding grace in the messiness of what is, the poem reminds us that the art, the revolution, and the love we are searching for were already waiting right here in the present moment all along. #poetry #overcoming #revolution #life #romantic

Sullivan captures that sudden, painful realization of how two people in love can hold entirely different definitions of compassion when faced with suffering. It grounds July’s exploration of lightness in a quiet, haunting moment, showing how even our most desperate attempts to be kind, whether burning our fingers to save a life or stepping in to end its pain can reveal the unbridgeable distance between us. By turning a simple summer afternoon on its head, the poem reminds us that true mercy isn't always gentle, and breaking free often begins when we finally see each other clearly. #poetry #difference #mercy #summer #mantis

Lately I've been feeling whether my creative efforts, or err hobbies, (yes, I'm afraid to call it work) amounts to anything, and Piercy has an answer for me, and all of us who are in this boat. She strips away the paralyzing, state-driven expectation of institutional validation, reminding us that being a writer or artist isn't a title bestowed by others, but simply the quiet, persistent act of doing the work itself. By cutting through our self-doubt and unburdening us from the heavy demand for external approval, the poem invites us to step into the ultimate lightness: creating purely because the work demands to exist. . #poetry #writing #writersblock #overcoming #july

Standing in solidarity with students in Delhi taking to the streets to demand justice, Hughes’s "Freedom" echoes across time as a fierce refusal to accept state delays, hollow promises, or compromise. It grounds July’s spirit of breaking free in an urgent, uncompromising present, declaring that true liberation is a vital necessity that cannot be doled out in slow, comfortable installments. By insisting that rights belong to us now rather than at some distant point of political convenience, the poem serves as a timeless anthem for every youth movement standing tall against authority. . #poetry #delhi #summer #freedom #youth

//july//lightness// #poetry #delhi #protests #youth #empowerment

Following the survival strategy of "Instead of Depression," Gibson’s "Spider" directly confronts our internal pain and sorrow, personifying a heavy, creeping grief as a small, fragile houseguest. It beautifully serves July's theme of lightness by demonstrating that we don't have to violently crush or run away from our darkest feelings; instead, we can choose to sit quietly alongside them. By defusing the terrifying weight of suffering through a gentle, almost tender truce, the poem reminds us that sorrow loses its paralyzing power the moment we stop fighting it and allow it to simply exist. . #summer #pain #poetry #sorrow #moving

Gibson beautifully reframes a heavy, paralyzing mental fog by actively choosing to populate the emptiness with small, weightless fragments of wonder. It serves as a vital testament to July's philosophy of lightness, showing that when the mind feels utterly crushed by its own shadows, survival is found in the quiet, radical act of looking at a blade of grass or a passing cloud. By shifting the focus from a suffocating internal weight to the fragile, beautiful details of the outside world, the poem reminds us that we can gently unburden the heart simply by allowing ourselves to notice the small sparks of life still happening around us. #poetry #depression #positivelife #life #summer

//invocation//lightness// #poetry #summer #sticky

George captures a profound sense of lightness by reducing the vast, heavy darkness of existence to the fragile span of a single struck match. It fits seamlessly into July’s philosophy, illustrating that clarity does not need to be a permanent, solid monument; instead, it is found in the fleeting moments our nerves work to salvage the light after it vanishes. By showing how the mind can weightlessly carry a drifting spark through the deep dark, the poem reminds us that our return to the heavy reality of being mere bodies is not a defeat, but a graceful settling back into the earth. . #poetry #lightness #summer #light #existential

After traveling from the untamed, mechanical energy of Larkin’s "Solar" to the sun-bleached, modern surrender of Lorde’s Solar Power, Mary Oliver’s "The Sun" brings us to the ultimate point of spiritual stillness. It offers a breathtaking anchor for July's lightness by asking a beautifully simple question, whether we have ever felt anything more magnificent than the daily, generous return of dawn. By urging us to look away from the heavy, cluttered complications of our own making, the poem unburdens the soul, inviting us to throw open our arms and accept the wild, free gift of the world's light. #poetry #maryoliver #sun #summer #july

Pessoa captures the ultimate state of zen-like presence, stripping the act of seeing of all heavy intellectual analysis and philosophical baggage. It serves as a vital anchor for July’s exploration of lightness, demonstrating that true freedom begins when we stop forcing complex meanings onto a world that simply wants to exist. By celebrating a gaze that is completely unburdened by memory, worry, or hidden motives, the poem invites us to look at reality with the clean, uncomplicated transparency of a sunflower turning toward the light. #poetry #pessoa #Portuguese #experience #self

While yesterday's look at "Grinding the Lens" showed us the rigorous, patient labor required to clear away the heavy distortions of the ego, "Praising Spring" captures the exact moment that hard-won transparency meets the world. It serves as a beautiful continuation of July's lightness, shifting from the quiet discipline of clearing our internal sight to the pure, unburdened joy of witnessing a stark reality bloom without our interference. By stepping into a landscape freed from past ghosts, Gregg reminds us that the ultimate reward of a polished, empty mind is the capacity to let the present hour stream through in all its fragile, unfiltered clarity. #poetry #summer #spring #nature #beauty

Larkin breaks from his characteristic cynical detachment to offer a rare, uncharacteristic hymn of praise to the sun, viewing it as an untamed, self-yielding engine of pure light. It introduces a brilliant, blinding warmth to July’s philosophy of lightness, celebrating a cosmic force that continuously spends its immense energy without demanding a return or hoarding its wealth. By focusing on a magnificent presence that remains entirely unburdened by human anxiety or ego, the poem invites the self to look upward, drop its heavy defenses, and simply bask in an untethered, perpetual gift. . #poetry #philiplarkin #sun #solar #summer

The poem tracks the meticulous, quiet labor of polishing away the cloudy imperfections of a surface until it becomes entirely transparent to the world's light. It aligns perfectly with July's philosophy of lightness, demonstrating that true clarity is a process of subtraction; patiently scraping away the heavy, distorted layers of our own egos and preconceptions. By transforming a repetitive, earthly task into a pursuit of pure vision, it reminds us that the mind becomes truly unburdened when it stops projecting its own internal shadows and simply allows reality to stream through unfiltered. #poetry #summer #unburdened #nature #beauty

Raine reframes human identity not as a heavy, static vessel of personal history, but as a fluid conduit through which an "irrecapturable" wave of universal experience temporarily passes. It introduces a sublime, cosmic lightness to the July curation, suggesting that the self is simply a single leaf on a myriadfold tree, fundamentally unburdened by the exhausting need to possess or permanently anchor the passing hours. By shifting our perspective from the claustrophobic grief of individual loss to the vast, ongoing current of an eternal omnipresence, the poem allows the guarded ego to dissolve gracefully into a weightless resonance of the infinite. . #poetry #existential #spiritual #lightness #life

Strand strips away all poetic excess to capture a profound moment of stillness, where the simple, gathering illumination of the sky becomes a quiet salvation. It beautifully maps onto July’s philosophy of lightness, showing that we do not need to endlessly pursue meaning; rather, we must learn to patiently yield to the world as it unfolds. By focusing on how a single, fleeting dawn can completely unburden the mind of its overnight shadows, the poem reminds us that true clarity is not something we build, but something we gracefully let in. #poetry #markstrand #modernist #light #love

Rodriguez captures the intoxicating, heat-soaked surrender of a mind bleached of all rigid rules and societal thought by the blinding midsummer sun. It serves as a beautifully visceral anchor for July, illustrating a radical lightness where all intellectual anxieties dissolve entirely into pure, instinctual sensory steam. By celebrating a state of being so "sun-stupid" that the heavy, guarded ego completely melts away, the poem unburdens the self, inviting us to boldly and unapologetically exist inside the fleeting freedom of our own bodies; that sometimes all of us should. . #poetry #summer #heat #modernist #post-modernist

Frost confronts our human impulse to silence the persistent, messy rhythms of the world when they clash with our personal anxieties, tracking his own regret for wanting to shoo away a singing bird. It serves as a beautiful micro-meditation on July's philosophy, demonstrating that heavy burdens often stem from our own desire to control and tidy up a transient reality. By ultimately declaring that there is something deeply wrong with silencing any expression of life, the poem invites the self to drop its rigid defenses, step out of its own head, and gracefully co-exist with the unburdened music passing through the hour. . #poetry #robertfrost #romantic #nature #music

Berry tracks the liberating moment the self stops trying to possess, control, or master its own creations, choosing instead to surrender them to the unpredictable currents of the world. It beautifully anchors July’s focus on the art of staying unburdened, showing that our heaviest anxieties often come from the frantic effort to guard and defend what we claim as ours. By transforming the act of letting go into a radical, generative gift, the poem unburdens the soul, proving that true lightness is found when we finally allow ourselves to flow freely into the passing landscape without demanding anything in return. . #poetry #unburden #romantic #existential #nature

Stevens positions us at the very palm at the end of the mind, where a gold-feathered bird sings in a landscape completely stripped of human baggage and intellect. Written at the end of his life, it represents the absolute zenith of creative lightness. The human imagination distilled to its pure essence, creating art that exists entirely for its own sake, unmoored from the heavy responsibility of carrying a message. By showing that this bird sings without any desire to console or explain, the poem invites us to drop our frantic pursuit of purpose and simply exist, weightless and bright, in the passing current of being. #modernist #poetry #wallacestevens #writing #existential

Gay transforms a sudden, public moment of shared laughter into a radical sanctuary of relief from the heavy anxieties of the world. It perfectly mirrors the July philosophy, showing that staying unburdened is not about hiding from reality, but actively choosing the grace of an unexpected, fleeting connection. By celebrating the effortless weightlessness born from communal joy, the poem serves as a brilliant reminder that a simple, passing moment of gratitude is enough to dissolve our daily gravity. #poetry #self #dread #existential #gratitude

Kenyon quietly chronicles the weightless ease of an ordinary day: eating cereal, walking the dog, sleeping beside her lover; while undercurrents of the transient clock pulse through every stanza. It offers a perfect baseline for July's lightness, reminding us that everyday peace is a radical gift precisely because it exists on the edge of a sudden change. By punctuating each simple comfort with the line, "it might have been otherwise," the poem untethers the self from the illusion of a permanent tomorrow, forcing us to hold the passing hour with a deep, unburdened gratitude. #poetry #july #zine #life #literature

Oliver captures the total dissolution of human anxiety the moment we step into the quiet, unburdened presence of the woods. The trees do not demand achievement or performance; instead, they offer a gentle, green reminder that our only true work is to be glad, light, and open to the passing hour. It is a beautiful anchor for July, showing that when we strip away the heavy, self-made fictions of the ego, we finally learn to simply stand still, breathe, and grow unburdened toward the light. . #poetry #nature #romantic #maryoliver #self

Rilke instructs us not to flee the heavy, obscuring shadows of existence, but to transform them into a resonant instrument that rings out across space and time. It is the ultimate expression of a defiant, transformative lightness; proving that when the self is pushed to its absolute limits, the response is not to break, but to vibrate with intense vitality. By urging us to realize that our own breath can shatter the silence, the poem unburdens the soul, turning the fleeting moment of our deepest isolation into a radical, ringing declaration of presence. #poetry #rilke #soul #self #transform

cummings uses a sun-drenched, whimsical afternoon at the shore to show how easily the heavy, complex self can be dissolved by simple, fleeting encounters with the sea. Each girl finds a different fragment of her own psyche: a shell, a starfish, a crab, a smooth stone, proving that who we are is not a rigid monument, but something fluid and beautifully untethered. It perfectly captures the spirit of July, reminding us that whenever we cast off our adult anxieties and choose to lose ourselves in play, it is always our true, unburdened self we find. #poetry #beach #spirit #sunny #shore

Hikmet refutes the heavy paralysis of existential dread, asserting that even while the world fractures around us, the act of living must remain a bright and stubborn celebration. It captures a radical, unburdened lightness that does not ignore suffering, but deliberately chooses the vitality of a passing bird or a child's laughter as its sanctuary. By transforming the fleeting nature of life into a reason for joyful persistence, the poem demonstrates that the ultimate refusal to be weighed down is simply to love the world exactly as it passes. #poetry #romantic #turkish #revolution #lightness

The perfect way to start this month can be none other than "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. Thomas’s refusal to surrender is not a heavy, desperate clinging to life, but a fierce assertion of vitality against the crushing gravity of the end. True lightness is found in this exact defiance, the radical choice to burn brightly and stay unburdened by the dark, turning a transient existence into a blazing spark. For the self, the poem demands a total casting off of passive neutrality and the polite expectations of the world. It means realizing that when the illusion of permanence fades, the ego is finally liberated to rage, laugh, and exist entirely in the intensity of the passing hour. . //Invocation//lightness// . #poetry #writing #july #lightness #dylanthomas

Atwood confronts the grand illusion of human possession, capturing the exact second our prideful claim of "I own this" is quietly shattered by the natural world. It provides a radical alignment with the July theme, demonstrating that true lightness requires acknowledging we are merely transient visitors who cannot anchor a landscape to our names. By stripping away the heavy fiction of ownership, the poem unburdens the self forcing a breathless, sudden awakening to the reality that we do not possess the earth, but rather belong to it. //invocation//lightness// #poetry #nature #self #awakening #july

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize

Love is apart from all things. Desire and excitement are nothing beside it. It is not the body that finds love. What leads us there is the body. What is not love provokes it. What is not love quenches it. Love lays hold of everything we know. The passions which are called love also change everything to a newness at first. Passion is clearly the path but does not bring us to love. It opens the castle of our spirit so that we might find the love which is a mystery hidden there. Love is one of many

I fall asleep meditating rivers— their flows, that gravity desires their deep waters, determines their pull, that dams do not stop them, that even there, behind that solid wall, their weight downs them and, released, they rage toward their easement as much as in natural falls where they gush white in frantic slams at rocks and tear at earth-banks because Earth has lured them, Sun has energized. In less watered times, other places, quietly, shallow streams sport more gently at the rocks to speak

How lucky we are That you can’t sell A poem, that it has No value. Might As well Give it away. That poem you love, That saved your life, Wasn’t it given to you?

At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death; the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens; the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments; the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page; the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses, for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert; the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the se

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky

That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot. The sound was an ordinary, daily, cluffy sound. But all at once, I knew you loved me. An unheard-of thing, love audible in water falling.

This is what was bequeathed us: This earth the beloved left And, leaving, Left to us. No other world But this one: Willows and the river And the factory With its black smokestacks. No other shore, only this bank On which the living gather. No meaning but what we find here. No purpose but what we make. That, and the beloved’s clear instructions: Turn me into song; sing me awake.

The night knows nothing of the chants of night. It is what it is as I am what I am: And in perceiving this I best perceive myself And you. Only we two may interchange Each in the other what each has to give. Only we two are one, not you and night, Nor night and I, but you and I, alone, So much alone, so deeply by ourselves, So far beyond the casual solitudes, That night is only the background of our selves, Supremely true each to its separate self, In the pale light that each upon the other thro

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life

It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then w

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’

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? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring—Wh

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.

This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls the song nobody knows because anyone who has heard it is dead, and the others can't remember. Shall I tell you the secret and if I do, will you get me out of this bird suit? I don't enjoy it here squatting on this island looking picturesque and mythical with these two feathery maniacs, I don't enjoy singing this trio, fa

My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please. My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except. Past cure I am, now reason is past care, And frantic-mad with evermore unrest; My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are, At random from the truth vainly expressed: Fo

I loved you before I was born. It doesn’t make sense, I know. I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see. And I’ve lived longing for your ever look ever since. That longing entered time as this body. And the longing grew as this body waxed. And the longing grows as the body wanes. The longing will outlive this body. I loved you before I was born. It doesn’t make sense, I know. Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes. And I’ve been lonely for you fr

There is a fish, that quivers in the pool, itself a shadow, but its shadow, clear. Catch it again and again, it still is there. Against the flowing stream, its life keeps pace with death - the impulse and the flash of grace hiding in its stillness, moves to be motionless. No net will hold it - always it will return Where the ripples settle, and the sand - It lives unmoved, equated with the stream, As flowers are fit for air, man for his dream.

Mother rain, manifold, measureless, falling on fallow, on field and forest, on house-roof, low hovel, high tower, downwelling waters all-washing, wider than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster than countrysides, calming, recalling: return to us, teaching our troubled souls in your ceaseless descent to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root, to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.

Crude seeing’s all our joy: could we discern The cold dark infinite vast where atoms burn —Lone suns—in flesh, our treasure and our play, Who’d dare to breathe this fern-thick bird-rich day?

Once you were always calling me, Calling me when I could not answer, Urging me where I could not follow— So that I wished I had been born without desire, As a stone. But now many days you have left me. And in the silence I have learned your meaning. For a part of me is gone when you are gone; I am less And the world is less. O let me have my longing back again! Now gladly I will bear it; Gladly I will hold it to me, Though without release; Always. For what would be the pride of the sun itself Wi

Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning. Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgiveable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

But eventually, you are cross-legged on your own sofa, in your own little apartment, eating a piece of cake topped with sugared peach and you're drenched in the wet orange joy of it. Every time you touch your fingertips to your soft pale belly, you realise: you are living. What a dream you could be wishing for in some other, darker, life: to be here, now. Bathtub full of tea, cotton bedspread speckled with a hundred blue flowers, a thrift store ceramic planter with a sunlit basil plant forming i

The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning in the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, lime and appetite, the oceanic fluids; it needs the body’s world, instinct and imagination and the dark hug of time, sweetness and tangibility, to be understood, to be more than pure light that burns wh

As the mist leaves no scar On the dark green hill, So my body leaves no scar On you, nor ever will. When wind and hawk encounter, What remains to keep? So you and I encounter Then turn, then fall to sleep. As many nights endure Without a moon or star, So will we endure When one is gone and far.

Before you came, things were as they should be: the sky was the dead-end of sight, the road was just a road, wine merely wine. Now everything is like my heart, a color at the edge of blood: the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns, the gold when we meet, the season ablaze, the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames, and the black when you cover the earth with the coal of dead fires. And the sky, the road, the glass of wine? The sky is a shirt wet with tears, the road a v

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain, Its ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkn

love is more thicker than forget more thinner than recall more seldom than a wave is wet more frequent than to fail it is most mad and moonly and less it shall unbe than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea love is less always than to win less never than alive less bigger than the least begin less littler than forgive it is most sane and sunly and more it cannot die than all the sky which only is higher than the sky

was how horses simply give birth to other horses. Not a baby by any means, not a creature of liminal spaces, but already a four-legged beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way to another horse and then suddenly there are two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you. You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two computers swinging in it unwieldily at your side. I remember we broke into laughter when we saw each ot