“
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
”
”
Dorothea Mackellar (The Poems of Dorothea Mackellar)
“
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn't care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.
”
”
Emily Dickinson
“
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow;
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.
”
”
Robert Browning Hamilton
“
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese)
“
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.
Healthy, free, the world before me.
The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.
Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.
Henceforth, I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Songs for the Open Road: Poems of Travel and Adventure (Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry))
“
Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
”
”
Robert Browning
“
After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there?
”
”
Frank O'Hara (The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara)
“
In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon...
”
”
Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon)
“
History repeats itself. Someone says this.
History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
history is the little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of,
I know history. There are many names in history... but none of them are ours.
”
”
Richard Siken (Crush)
“
The red washing
down the bathtub
can't change the color of the sea
at all.
”
”
Derrick Brown
“
Despite the business and auto-rickshaws and bantering Bengalis just beyond his brown front door, Sanjit cultivates a distinct learning environment and energy, one created and galvanized above the tile floors, within the thin walls, below the imperative ceiling fans, and embraced by books.
”
”
Colin Phelan (The Local School)
“
Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father’s name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Aurora Leigh)
“
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy".
”
”
Robert Browning (Selected Poems)
“
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —
And thus we half-men struggle.
”
”
Robert Browning (Robert Browning's Poetry)
“
The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its best to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up and all the cottage warm;
”
”
Robert Browning
“
What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew
”
”
Robert Browning (Jocoseria)
“
A lion may die of an ass's kick.
”
”
Robert Browning (Robert Browning's Poetry)
“
I do not know much about gods;but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable . . .
”
”
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
“
As is your sort of mind,
So is your sort of search:
You will find what you desire.
”
”
Robert Browning (The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, Volume 5: Dramatic Romances; Christmas-Eve and Easter Day)
“
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
If Thou Must Love Me
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese)
“
You touched my flawed life so gently with love
burning upward in dark steady flame
burning me, burning me into healing.
”
”
Christy Brown (Of Snails and Skylarks)
“
My Heart
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind.
I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
”
”
Frank O'Hara
“
I searched for my own heart
and long after I had lost my way
in the days trailing past with their foliage
in the aloof sky blue with distance
I thought I'd find my heart
where I'd kept your eyes two brown butterflies
and I saw the swallows swoop
and shadows starlings
”
”
Ingrid Jonker
“
His eyes are golden brown when he’s intrigued by something. He’s regal-looking and handsome, but he’s more interested in formulas and solving crimes than he is in me or poetry. He acts devilishly warm one moment, then frigid the next,” I said. “So there will be no children or any beautiful paradise in our future. Most of the time I cannot even tolerate his presence. His arrogance is… I don’t know. Annoying.
”
”
Kerri Maniscalco (Stalking Jack the Ripper (Stalking Jack the Ripper, #1))
“
I came to you tardy and late
as I usually do to the better things in my life
”
”
Christy Brown (Of Snails and Skylarks)
“
I came in haste with cursing breath,
And heart of hardest steel;
But when I saw thee cold in death,
I felt as man should feel.
For when I look upon that face,
That cold, unheeding, frigid brown,
Where neither rage nor fear has place,
By Heaven! I cannot hate thee now!
”
”
Alfred Tennyson
“
she saw him as poetry
”
”
Talia Hibbert (Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1))
“
My whole life long I learn'd to love,
This hour my utmost art I prove.
And speak my passion—— heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
”
”
Robert Browning (The Poetry of Robert Browning)
“
I keep my kindness in my eyes
Gently folded around my iris
Like a velvety, brown blanket
That warms my vision
I keep my shyness in my hair
Tucked away into a ponytail
Looking for a chance to escape
On a few loose strands in the air
I keep my anger on my lips
Just waiting to unleash into the world
But trust me; it’s never in my heart
It evaporates into words
I keep my dignity upon my chin
Like a torch held up high
For those who have betrayed me
Radiating a silent, strong message
I keep my gratitude in my smile
A glistening waterfall in the sun
Gently splashing at that person
Who made me happy for some reason
I keep my sensitivity in my hands
Reaching out for your wet cheek
Holding you, with all the love
The love I want to share, and feel
I keep my passion in my writing
My words breathing like fire
Screeching against an endless road
As I continue to be inspired
I keep my simplicity in my soul
Spread over me like a clear sky
Reflecting all that I am
And all that’s ever passed me by
And I hope you will look
Beyond my ordinary face
My simple, tied hair
My ordinary tastes
And I hope you will see me
From everyone...apart
As I keep my beauty
in my heart.
”
”
Sanober Khan
“
If passion was a substance I would say it is dark brown, and then blood red. It's like wet grass, tons of it soaked in mud. It's warm and it stinks like shit and it's unaccountably and endlessly good. It's thick and it goes on for miles and it isn't so much deep as bottomless and it holds you in its grip, you never drown. And then it goes. That's all you know.
”
”
Eileen Myles (Inferno (A Poet's Novel))
“
i could go if i wanted
share the floorboards with someone
in a place less haunted
but i like it here
and i’m happy to stay in this mess on my own
in this home i have built for myself in my bones
”
”
Savannah Brown (Graffiti (and Other Poems))
“
Death wins nothing here,
gnawing wings that amputate––
then spread, lift up, fly.
”
”
Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
“
Life with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
”
”
Robert Browning
“
He remembers a verse from the mystic poet, Rumi, Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
”
”
J.J. Brown (American Dream)
“
There is the happiness you have
And the happiness you deserve.
”
”
Jericho Brown (The Tradition)
“
The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete,—-
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“
I am becoming the woman I've wanted,
grey at the temples,
soft body, delighted,
cracked up by life
with a laugh that's known bitter
but, past it, got better,
knows she's a survivor--
that whatever comes,
she can outlast it.
I am becoming a deep
weathered basket.
I am becoming the woman I've longed for,
the motherly lover
with arms strong and tender,
the growing up daughter
who blushes surprises.
I am becoming full moons
and sunrises.
I find her becoming,
this woman I've wanted,
who knows she'll encompass,
who knows she's sufficient,
knows where she's going
and travels with passion.
Who remembers she's precious,
but knows she's not scarce--
who knows she is plenty,
plenty to share.
”
”
Jayne Brown
“
A rose lay open in full bloom
and, looking from my garden room,
I watched the sun-baked flower fill with rain.
It seemed so fragile,
resting there,
and such a silence filled the air,
the beauty of the moment caused me pain.
"What more?" I thought. "There must be more."
As if in answer then, I saw
one weighty drop that caused my rose to fall.
It trembled, then cascaded down
to earth just staining gentle brown
and, since then, I've felt different.
That's all.
”
”
Julie Andrews Edwards (Home: A Memoir of My Early Years)
“
My voice rings down through thousands of years to coil around your body and give you strength, you who have wept in direct sunlight, who have hungered in invisible chains, tremble to the cadence of my legacy: An army of lovers shall not fail.
”
”
Rita Mae Brown (The Hand That Cradles the Rock)
“
Early Morning in Your Room
It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water--
It seems you've traveled years to get here.
Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over.
Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter
to his Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling
With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That's what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.
”
”
Robert Bly (Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems, 1950–2011)
“
What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity
”
”
Robert Browning (The complete poetical works of Browning)
“
I wasn’t convinced anyone felt the exact same way I did. That’s the rub about being human, I guess. You have all these tools to express yourself, art and music and poetry and stuff, but no one will ever truly know how you feel unless you somehow manage to create a projection of your brain and play it on to the wall. Even then it might not be as vivid. Even then it might not be as close.
”
”
Savannah Brown (The Truth About Keeping Secrets)
“
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
”
”
T.S. Eliot (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
”
”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Ultima Thule)
“
I'm disappearing in the nightfall,
becoming one with the rocks I’m sitting on…
Sinking in my own reminiscence of your smile,
your lips and your smell…
Not missing you, not longing for you,
but grieving for the dreams that held the image of
the darkest brown eyes.
Perhaps I was your one as you called me…
It is said a man can be happy
with any woman
but the one he truly loves.
”
”
Tatjana Ostojic (Baghdad Nights)
“
you’ll find the buildings taller, that
the halls are full of ghosts
but everything still here is
what you remember most
”
”
Savannah Brown
“
Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him.
”
”
Maureen Johnson (Zombies Vs. Unicorns)
“
When I kill me, I will
Do it the same way most Americans do,
I promise you: cigarette smoke
Or a piece of meat on which I choke
Or so broke I freeze
In one of these winters we keep
Calling worst. I promise if you hear
Of me dead anywhere near
A cop, then that cop killed me.
”
”
Jericho Brown (The Tradition)
“
But before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka established that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female.
”
”
Margot Lee Shetterly (Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race)
“
To a Vase
"How do I break thee? Let me count the ways.
I break thee if thou art at any height
My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight,
I sulk, or have one of my crazy days.
I break thee with an accidental graze
Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright.
I break thee out of pure and simple spite
The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise.
I break thee if a bug upon thee sits.
I break thee if I'm in a playful mood,
And then I wrestle with the shiny bits.
I break thee if I do not like my food.
And if someone they shards together fits,
I'll break thee once again when thou art glued.
”
”
Henry N. Beard (Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse)
“
The fox came to pay the birch tree a vist, bringing with him a book of poetry. He was wearing a dark blue suit fresh from the tailor's, and his light brown leather shoes squeaked slightly as he walked.
”
”
Kenji Miyazawa (Winds from Afar (English and Japanese Edition))
“
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
”
”
Robert Browning (Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came)
“
Girl in the wind
blowing wide open
the closed doors of my life -
which way are we going?
Standing against the lurid sky
on the stark brink of ocean
arms outstretched
as if your love and hunger
would embrace the world
and I in my inner room
playing my poetic premutations
can only look and ask the unanswerable.
Brave and cunning I speak to my typewriter
knowing it will not answer back
knowing it will not reply
what I ask and do not want to hear
as you with the vast sunset merge
a multitude of dreams away
uniquely alone and outside of me
in the purity and rarity of this moment
immeasurably beyond my love and my rage
and with the dying call of gulls
the echo resounds:
Girl in the wind
throwing aside
the tight shutters of my life -
which way are we going?
”
”
Christy Brown (Of Snails and Skylarks)
“
Some evenings, I kneel toward Mecca with my uncle.
Maybe Mecca
is the place Leftie goes to in his mind, when
the memory of losing
his arm becomes too much. Maybe Mecca is
good memories,
presents and stories and poetry and arroz con pollo
and family and friends...
Maybe Mecca is the place everyone is looking for...
It's out there in front of you, my uncle says.
I know I'll know it
when I get there.
”
”
Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming)
“
Wind and breeze are separated today
Crimson twilight denies to fade away
Grass blades turn brown to match the soil
We pretend to smile at every turmoil
”
”
Munia Khan
“
Tonight
this night
I can write and describe the entire world
Two green eyes
Her brown hairs
Behind the window,
thru the glass
”
”
G. P. Moci (Isabella)
“
a calm that would undo
most anyone who
thought noise worse
than its opposite
”
”
Kevin Young (Brown: Poems)
“
My mother grew morning glories that spilled onto the walkway toward her porch
Because she was a woman with land who showed as much by giving it color.
She told me I could have whatever I worked for. That means she was an American.
But she’d say it was because she believed
In God. I am ashamed of America
And confounded by God.
”
”
Jericho Brown (The Tradition)
“
I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“
Between the ages of ten and fifteen in St. Petersburg, I must have read more fiction and poetry—English, Russian and French—than in any other five-year period of my life. I relished especially the works of Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexander Blok. On another level, my heroes were the Scarlet Pimpernel, Phileas Fogg, and Sherlock Holmes. In other words, I was a perfectly normal trilingual child in a family with a large library. At a later period, in Western Europe, between the ages of 20 and 40, my favorites were Housman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin. Of these top favorites, several—Poe, Jules Verne, Emmuska Orezy, Conan Doyle, and Rupert Brooke—have lost the glamour and thrill they held for me. The others remain intact and by now are probably beyond change as far as I am concerned.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions)
“
Death is always death, and in real life, especially in the world of the hospital, sudden death, whether violent and gruesome or unbelievably prosaic, is unsettling. What can one do? Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face, and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the antidote to death is not poetry, or miracle treatments, or a roomful of people with technical expertise and good intentions—the antidote to death is life.
”
”
Theresa Brown (Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between)
“
Endymion
The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
Lie on the landscape green,
With shadows brown between.
And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,
Had dropt her silver bow
Upon the meadows low.
On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
When, sleeping in the grove,
He dreamed not of her love.
Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
Nor voice, nor sound betrays
Its deep, impassioned gaze.
It comes,--the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,--
In silence and alone
To seek the elected one.
It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep,
And kisses the closed eyes
Of him, who slumbering lies.
O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!
No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.
Responds,--as if with unseen wings,
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers, in its song,
"Where hast thou stayed so long?
”
”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Ballads and Other Poems)
“
Even when the lights go out, even when someone says to me: "It's over---," even when from the stage a gray gust of emptiness drifts toward me,
even when not one silent ancestor sits beside me anymore---not a woman, not even the boy with the brown squint-eye:
I'll sit here anyway. One can always watch.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Duino Elegies)
“
Hurt by me, they will not call me
Brother. Hear me coming,
And they cross their legs. As men
Are wont to hate women,
As women are taught to hate
Themselves, they hate a woman
They smell in me, every muscle
Of her body clenched
”
”
Jericho Brown (The New Testament)
“
I am the interpretation of the prophet
I am the artist in the coffin
I am the brave flag stained with blood
I am the wounds overcome
I am the dream refusing to sleep
I am the bare-breasted voice of liberty
I am the comic the insult and the laugh
I am the right the middle and the left
I am the poached eggs in the sky
I am the Parisian streets at night
I am the dance that swings till dawn
I am the grass on the greener lawn
I am the respectful neighbour and the graceful man
I am the encouraging smile and the helping hand
I am the straight back and the lifted chin
I am the tender heart and the will to win
I am the rainbow in rain
I am the human who won’t die in vain
I am Athena of Greek mythology
I am the religion that praises equality
I am the woman of stealth and affection
I am the man of value and compassion
I am the wild horse ploughing through
I am the shoulder to lean onto
I am the Muslim the Jew and the Christian
I am the Dane the French and the Palestinian
I am the straight the square and the round
I am the white the black and the brown
I am the free speech and the free press
I am the freedom to express
I will die for my right to be all the above here mentioned
And should threat encounter I’ll pull my pencil
”
”
Mie Hansson (Where Pain Thrives)
“
Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten --
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild --
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child?
”
”
Sara Teasdale (Flame and Shadow)
“
What are you doing here?"
He takes a deep breath. "I came for you."
"And how on EARTH did you know I was up here?"
"I saw you." He pauses. "I came to make another wish,and I was standing on Point Zero when I saw you enter the tower. I called your name,and you looked around,but you didn't see me."
"So you decided to just...come up?" I'm doubtful,despite the evidence in front of me.It must have taken superhuman strength for him to make it past the first flight of stairs alone.
"I had to.I couldn't wait for you to come down,I couldn't wait any longer. I had to see you now.I have to know-"
He breaks off,and my pulse races. What what what?
"Why did you lie to me?"
The question startles me.Not what I was expecting.Nor hoping.He's still on the ground,but he stares up at me.His brown eyes are huge and heartbroken. I'm confused. "I'm sorry, I don't know what-"
"November.At the creperie. I asked you if we'd talked about anything strange that night I was drunk in your room.If I had said anything about our relationship,or my relationship with Ellie.And you said no."
Oh my God. "How did you know?"
"Josh told me."
"When?"
"November."
I'm stunned. "I...I..." My throat is dry. "If you'd seen the look on your face that day.In the restaurant. How could I possibly tell you? With your mother-"
"But if you had,I wouldn't have wasted all of these months.I thought you were turning me down.I thought you weren't interested."
"But you were drunk! You had a girlfriend! What was I supposed to do? God,St. Clair,I didn't even know if you meant it."
"Of course I meant it." He stands,and his legs falter.
"Careful!"
Step.Step.Step. He toddles toward me,and I reach for his hand to guide him.We're so close to the edge. He sits next to me and grips my hand harder. "I meant it,Anna.I mean it."
"I don't under-"
He's exasperated. "I'm saying I'm in love with you! I've been in love with you this whole bleeding year!"
My mind spins. "But Ellie-"
"I cheated on her every day.In my mind, I thought of you in ways I shouldn't have,again and again. She was nothing compared to you.I've never felt this way about anybody before-"
"But-"
"The first day of school." He scoots closer. "We weren't physics partners by accident.I saw Professeur Wakefield assigning lab partners based on where people were sitting,so I leaned forward to borrow a pencil from you at just the right moment so he'd think we were next to each other.Anna,I wanted to be your partner the first day."
"But..." I can't think straight.
"I doubt you love poetry! 'I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly,between the shadow and the soul.'"
I blink at him.
"Neruda.I starred the passage.God," he moans. "Why didn't you open it?"
"Because you said it was for school."
"I said you were beautiful.I slept in your bed!"
"You never mave a move! You had a girlfriend!"
"No matter what a terrible boyfriend I was,I wouldn't actually cheat on her. But I thought you'd know.With me being there,I thought you'd know."
We're going in circles. "How could I know if you never said anything?"
"How could I know if you never said anyting?"
"You had Ellie!"
"You had Toph! And Dave!
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
The cure for our modern maladies is dirt under the fingernails and the feel of thick grass between the toes. The cure for our listlessness is to be out within the invigorating wind. The cure for our uselessness is to take back up our stewardship; for it is not that there has been no work to be done, we simply have not been attending to it.
”
”
L.M. Browning (Ruminations at Twilight: Poetry Exploring the Sacred)
“
Those shiny eyes like the stars in the sky; but black and brown,
And those beautiful lips like the flowers but sugary
And those kind smells, lovable but with no purpose
All meant to be for me?
Someone must have been praying and wishing me the whole world
”
”
M.F. Moonzajer (A moment with God ; Poetry)
“
our tragedy begins humid.
in a humid classroom.
with a humid text book. breaking into us.
stealing us from ourselves.
one poem. at a time.
it begins with shakespeare.
the hot wash.
the cool acid. of
dead white men and women. people.
each one a storm.
crashing. into our young houses.
making us islands. easy isolations.
until we are so beleaguered and
swollen
with a definition of poetry that is white skin and
not us.
that we tuck our scalding. our soreness.
behind ourselves and
learn
poetry.
as trauma. as violence. as erasure.
another place we do not exist.
another form of exile
where we should praise. honor. our own starvation.
the little bits of langston. phyllis wheatley.
and
angelou during black history month. are the crumbs. are the minor boats.
that give us slight rest.
to be waterdrugged into rejecting the nuances of
my own bursting
extraordinary
self.
and to have
this
be
called
education.
to take my name out of my name.
out of where my native poetry lives. in me.
and
replace it with keats. browning. dickson. wolf. joyce. wilde. wolfe. plath. bronte. hemingway. hughes. byron. frost. cummings. kipling. poe. austen. whitman. blake. longfellow. wordsworth. duffy. twain. emerson. yeats. tennyson. auden. thoreau. chaucer. thomas. raliegh. marlowe. burns. shelley. carroll. elliot…
(what is the necessity of a black child being this high off of whiteness.)
and so. we are here. brown babies. worshipping. feeding. the glutton that is white literature. even after it dies.
(years later. the conclusion:
shakespeare is relative.
white literature is relative.
that we are force fed the meat of
an animal
that our bodies will not recognize. as inherent nutrition.
is not relative.
is inert.)
”
”
Nayyirah Waheed (Nejma)
“
I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trashbag, and if I do,
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed
Or in the jail cell of a town
I only know the name of
Because I have to drive through it
To get home.
”
”
Jericho Brown (The Tradition)
“
I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone.
”
”
Roberto Bolaño (By Night in Chile)
“
What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
‘Tis something, nay ‘tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what’s best for men?
Are you—-poor, sick, old ere your time—-
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding’s a joy! For me, I ride.
”
”
Robert Browning
“
NOVEMBER
Now chill & grey November
Come slowly o'er the plain,
Drearily the winter wind
Sings songs of future pain.
Wrapped closely in deep grey,
She scarcely will let pass
A little ray of sun
To cheer the sodden grass.
She scatters with her hand
The leaves dried up and brown,
The few that yet remain
From gay October's crown.
Her eyes and dark and sad,
Sad for the dying year,
And often in the mist
There falls a silent tear.
Beneath a cheerless sky
The trees are standing bare,
The fog has risen thick
And she is no more there.
”
”
Beatrice Crane
“
For the Wife Beater's Wife
With blue irises her face is blossomed. Blue
Circling to yellow, circling to brown on her cheeks.
The long bone of her jaw untracked
She hides in our kitchen.
He sleeps it off next door.
Her chicken legs tucked under her
She's frantic with lies, animated
Before the swirling smoke.
On her cigarette she leaves red prints, red
Like a cut on the white cup.
Like a skin she pulls her sweater around her.
She's cold,
She brings the cold in with her.
In our kitchen she hides.
He sleeps it off next door, his great
Belly heaving with booze.
Again and again she tells the story
As if the details ever changed,
As if blows to the face were somehow
Different beating to beating.
We reach for her but can't help.
She retreats into her cold love of him
And looks across the table at us
As if across a sea.
Next door he claws out of sleep.
She says she thinks she'll do something
After all, with her hair tonight.
”
”
Bruce Weigl
“
The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students
Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
“Clinical Sonnets”; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, “Being German my hero is Hitler,”
instead of “Sincerely yours,” at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites:
I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had of trying to guess
which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue. I did care.
I did read each poem entire.
I did say everything I thought
in the mildest words I knew. And now,
in this poem, or chopped prose, no better,
I realize, than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you,
I have to say I am relieved it is over:
at the end I could feel only pity
for that urge toward more life
your poems kept smothering in words, the smell
of which, days later, tingled in your nostrils
as new, God-given impulses
to write.
Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of imaginary towns—Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell—
their solitude given away in poems, only their loneliness kept.
Galway Kinnell
”
”
Galway Kinnell (Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words; The Past)
“
today, i am a black woman in a body of coal
i am always burning and no one knows my name
i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from
the throat of ms. nina—i am always angry
i am always a bumble hive of hello
i love like this too loudly, my neighbors
think i am an unforgiving bitter
sometimes, i think my neighbors are right
most times i think my neighbors are nosey
”
”
Mahogany L. Browne
“
The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last l knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And l untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said aword!
”
”
Robert Browning (Robert Browning's Poetry)
“
I think of thee!—-my thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,
Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see
Except the straggling green which hides the wood.
Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood
I will not have my thoughts instead of thee
Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly
Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should,
Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare,
And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee
Drop heavily down,—-burst, shattered, everywhere!
Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee
And breathe within thy shadow a new air,
I do not think of thee—-I am too near thee.
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“
Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said
"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'")
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?
”
”
Elizabeth Alexander (American Sublime: Poems)
“
All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.
The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.
If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man
then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white
that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps
at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.
If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.
Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. The should destroy the lives
of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust
at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.
Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian man
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.
There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.
Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian
then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed
and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.
If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside
a white woman. Sometimes there are complications.
An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,
everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.
For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.
In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.
”
”
Sherman Alexie
“
You fell in love with her
when she couldn't love herself.
You loved her wide brown eyes
that resembled the color of pure honey,
and her big plump lips
that were perfect enough to kiss.
You loved her voice
when she called your name
because she couldn't fall asleep,
and the silence of it all
when she was long gone in her dreams.
You taught her to love herself;
head, toe, and everything in between.
Her body,
her mind
and soul.
Let nothing intervene.
”
”
ka.ya
“
I think I was enchanted
When first a sombre Girl —
I read that Foreign Lady** —
The Dark — felt beautiful —
And whether it was noon at night —
Or only Heaven — at Noon —
For very Lunacy of Light
I had not power to tell —
The Bees — became as Butterflies —
The Butterflies — as Swans —
Approached — and spurned the narrow Grass —
And just the meanest Tunes
That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer —
I took for Giants — practising
Titanic Opera —
The Days — to Mighty Metres stept —
The Homeliest — adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
'Twere suddenly confirmed —
I could not have defined the change —
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul —
Is witnessed — not explained —
'Twas a Divine Insanity —
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience —
'Tis Antidote to turn —
To Tomes of solid Witchcraft —
Magicians be asleep —
But Magic — hath an Element
Like Deity — to keep —
”
”
Emily Dickinson
“
Autumn comes
like a buyer of cloth,
her long fingers
touching,
turning orange,
yellow, brown.
taking what she wants,
stretching
the bone taut air.
Her skin crackles beneath
our feet.
I didn't think anyone wanted me,
bruises pulled
like a sweater around
my neck.
We talk
in the pore tightening air,
branches bare,
about the girl buried in the chill
of prewinter.
We show each other
our mutilated children
in the guise of women
as autumn plucks
at our lips.
Each color,
blue, black, ochre
popping like kisses
on the rib lined flesh,
the puberty soft things.
And we muse
how women
keep bruises
hidden
beneath dead
leaves.
”
”
Janice Mirikitani
“
This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens—
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.
Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.
”
”
Billy Collins (Picnic, Lightning)
“
After dinner, I went upstairs and found Ren standing on the veranda again, looking at the sunset. I approached him shyly and stood behind him. “Hello, Ren.”
He turned and openly studied my appearance. His gaze drifted ever so slowly down my body. The longer he looked, the wider his smile got. Eventually, his eyes worked their way back up to my bright red face.
He sighed and bowed deeply. “Sundari. I was standing here thinking nothing could be more beautiful than this sunset tonight, but I was mistaken. You standing here in the setting sun with your hair and skin aglow is almost more than a man can…fully appreciate.”
I tried to change the subject. “What does sundari mean?”
“It means ‘most beautiful.’”
I blushed again, which made him laugh. He took my hand, tucked it under his arm, and led me to the patio chairs. Just then, the sun dipped below the trees leaving its tangerine glow in the sky for just a few more moments.
We sat again, but this time he sat next to me on the swinging patio seat and kept my hand in his.
I ventured shyly, “I hope you don’t mind, but I explored your house today, including your room.”
“I don’t mind. I’m sure you found my room the least interesting.”
“Actually, I was curious about the note I found. Did you write it?”
“A note? Ah, yes. I just scribbled a few notes to help me remember what Phet had said. It just says seek Durga’s prophecy, the Cave of Kanheri, Kelsey is Durga’s favored one, that sort of thing.”
“Oh. I…also noticed a ribbon. Is it mine?”
“Yes. If you’d like it back, you can take it.”
“Why would you want it?”
He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I wanted a memento, a token from the girl who saved my life.”
“A token? Like a fair maiden giving her handkerchief to a knight in shining armor?”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
I jested wryly, “Too bad you didn’t wait for Cathleen to get a little older. She’s going to be very pretty.”
He frowned. “Cathleen from the circus?” He shook his head. “You were the chosen one, Kelsey. And if I had the option of choosing the girl to save me, I still would have picked you.”
“Why?”
“A number of reasons. I liked you. You are interesting. I enjoyed listening to your voice. I felt like you saw through the tiger skin to the person underneath. When you spoke, it felt like you were saying exactly the things I needed to hear. You’re smart. You like poetry, and you’re very pretty.”
I laughed at his statement. Me, pretty? He can’t be serious. I was average in so many ways. I didn’t really concern myself with current makeup, hairstyles, or fashionable, but uncomfortable, clothes like other teenagers. My complexion was pale, and my eyes were so brown that they were almost black. By far, my best feature was my smile, which my parents paid dearly for and so did I-with three years of metal braces.
Still, I was flattered. “Okay, Prince Charming, you can keep your memento.” I hesitated, and then said softly, “I wear those ribbons in memory of my mom. She used to brush out my hair and braid ribbons through it while we talked.”
Ren smiled understandingly. “Then it means even more to me.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
“
Big Brown Moose
I'm a big brown moose,
I'm a rascally moose,
I'm a moose with a tough, shaggy hide;
and I kick and I prance
in a long-legged dance
with my moose-mama close by my side.
I shrug off the cold
and I sneeze at the wind
and I swivel my ears in the snow;
and I tramp and I tromp
over forest and swamp,
'cause there's nowhere a moose cannot go.
I'm a big brown moose,
I'm a ravenous moose
as I hunt for the willow and yew;
with a snort and a crunch,
I rip off each bunch,
and I chew and I chew and I chew.
When together we slump
in a comfortable clump --
my mountainous mama and I --
I give her a nuzzle
of velvety muzzle.
Our frosty breath drifts to the sky.
I'm a big brown moose,
I'm a slumberous moose,
I'm a moose with a warm, snuggly hide;
and I bask in the moon
as the coyotes croon,
with my moose-mama close by my side.
”
”
Joyce Sidman (Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold)
“
He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
“
Offered a job as book critic for Time magazine as a young man, Bellow had been interviewed by Chambers and asked to give his opinion about William Wordsworth. Replying perhaps too quickly that Wordsworth had been a Romantic poet, he had been brusquely informed by Chambers that there was no place for him at the magazine. Bellow had often wondered, he told us, what he ought to have said. I suggested that he might have got the job if he'd replied that Wordsworth was a once-revolutionary poet who later became a conservative and was denounced by Browning and others as a turncoat. This seemed to Bellow to be probably right. More interesting was the related question: What if he'd kept that job?
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so closely, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in such minute detail, that it becomes invisible? Is it possible that while fastidiously calibrating the span of its wings or the length of its tarsus, we somehow lose sight of its poetry? That in our pedestrian descriptions of a marbled or vermiculated plumage we forfeit a glimpse of living canvases, cascades of carefully toned browns and golds that would shame Kandinsky, misty explosions of color to rival Monet? I believe that we do. I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell binding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies in the first place.
That is not to say that we should cease to establish facts and verify our information, but merely to suggest that unless those facts can be imbued with the flash of poetic insight then they remain dull gems; semi-precious stones scarcely worth the collecting.
”
”
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
“
Gospel
The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher
to where the road gives up and there’s
only a faint path strewn with lupine
between the mountain oaks. I don’t
ask myself what I’m looking for.
I didn’t come for answers
to a place like this, I came to walk
on the earth, still cold, still silent.
Still ungiving, I’ve said to myself,
although it greets me with last year’s
dead thistles and this year’s
hard spines, early blooming
wild onions, the curling remains
of spider’s cloth. What did I bring
to the dance? In my back pocket
a crushed letter from a woman
I’ve never met bearing bad news
I can do nothing about. So I wander
these woods half sightless while
a west wind picks up in the trees
clustered above. The pines make
a music like no other, rising and
falling like a distant surf at night
that calms the darkness before
first light. “Soughing” we call it, from
Old English, no less. How weightless
words are when nothing will do.
”
”
Philip Levine (Breath)
“
I'm not your blue-eyed Czech,
I'm just a brown-eyed girl,
A little mix of rock your world,
And now you'll never be the same.
You grabbed me by the hand,
I grabbed you by the neck.
I changed the game,
and your convictions.
So is it criminal to steal a heart or two?
I keep them on the shelf,
Like only hunters do.
I like it hard
I like you high
I love your mouth
When it's on mine.
I wanna hear you make that sound,
Cause it's the greatest thing around.
Take it off now,
Take from here.
Watch your head spin
When I come near,
And you will lose every time,
Cause I won't stop until your mine.
And they say who the hell is she?
They either love me or they hate me.
But still they never look away,
This vixen's gonna give you everything.
”
”
Crystal Woods (Better to be able to love than to be loveable)
“
Slowly, Delphine began to understand that each dish was created, not merely cooked as one would cook a slice of toast. Each had its own beauty and depth: its own poetry.
Course after course, the finished plates were passed among the chefs and sampled with care: small briny oysters from Corsica were nestled into a bed of pink rock salt; white asparagus were trimmed and served alongside a smoked duck salad; cream-fed pork was braised with pears and apples, and new potatoes were browned in duck fat and dusted with late summer truffles. Each dish was more amazing than the last.
”
”
N.M. Kelby (White Truffles in Winter)
“
Picnic, Lightning
It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body’s rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.
This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens—
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.
Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.
”
”
Billy Collins (Picnic, Lightning)
“
Raphael, Saint George and the Dragon, 1504-06
It’s hard to talk about what you believe while you are
believing it. Fervor reduces thought to shorthand and
all we get is an icon. Give a man a weapon and you
have a warrior. Put him on a horse and you have
a hero. The weapon is a tool. The horse is a metaphor.
Raphael painted this twice—white horse facing east
against the greens, white horse facing west against the
yellows. The maiden flees or prays, depending. A basic
dragon, the kind you’d expect from the Renaissance.
Evidence of evil but not proof. There’s a companion piece
as well: Saint Michael. Paint angels, it’s easier:
you don’t need the horse. Michael stands on Satan’s
throat, vanquishing, while everything brown burns red.
All these things happened. Allegedly. When you paint
an evil thing, do you invoke it or take away its power?
This has nothing to do with faith but is still a good
question. Raphael was trying to say something
about spirituality. This could be the definition of painting.
The best part of spirituality is reverence. There are other
parts. Some people like to hear the sound of their own
voice. If you don’t believe in the world it would be
stupid to paint it. If you don’t believe in God, who
are you talking to?
”
”
Richard Siken (War of the Foxes)
“
The brown autumn came. Out of doors, it brought to the fields the prodigality of the golden harvest, —to the forest, revelations of light,—and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long, meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of toil,—to the scholar, that sweet delirium of the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the south; it brought the wild song back to the fervid brain of the poet. Without, the village street was paved with gold; the river ran red with the reflection of the leaves. Within, the faces of friends brightened the gloomy walls; the returning footsteps of the long-absent gladdened the threshold; and all the sweet amenities of social life again resumed their interrupted reign.
”
”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Kavanagh)
“
He is the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. [...] Yes, Browning was great. And as what will he be remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered as a writer of fiction, as the most supreme writer of fiction, it may be, that we have ever had. His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what more should an artist do? Considered from the point of view of a creator of character he ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had he been articulate, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can touch the hem of his garment is George Meredith. Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything (Green Integer))
“
Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.”
The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.
A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames.
Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid.
Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
We’d like a list of what we lost
Think of those who landed in the Atlantic
The sharkiest of waters
Bonnetheads and thrashers
Spinners and blacktips
We are made of so much water
Bodies of water
Bodies walking upright on the mud at the bottom
The mud they must call nighttime
Oh there was some survival
Life
After life on the Atlantic—this present grief
So old we see through it
So thick we can touch it
And Jesus said of his wound Go on, touch it
I don’t have the reach
I’m not qualified
I can’t swim or walk or handle a hoe
I can’t kill a man
Or write it down
A list of what we lost
The history of the wound
The history of the wound
That somebody bought them
That somebody brought them
To the shore of Virginia and then
Inland
Into the land of cliché
I’d rather know their faces
Their names
My love yes you
Whether you pray or not
If I knew your name
I’d ask you to help me
Imagine even a single tooth
I’d ask you to write that down
But there’s not enough ink
I’d like to write a list of what we lost.
Think of those who landed in the Atlantic,
Think of life after life on the Atlantic—
Sweet Jesus. A grief so thick I could touch it.
And Jesus said of his wound, Go on, touch it.
But I don’t have the reach. I’m not qualified.
And you? How’s your reach? Are you qualified?
Don’t you know the history of the wound?
Here is the history of the wound:
Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them.
Though I know who caught them, sold them, bought them,
I’d rather focus on their faces, their names.
”
”
Jericho Brown (Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019)
“
Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Could keep you unharmed
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling all around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid
”
”
Joan Baez