F13


Ein Gleiches by JWvGoethe


Uber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spurest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.


A Similarity translated by JCWarren

Above all the hilltops
Is calm,
In all the treetops you sense
Scarcely a breath;
The birds are quiet in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You too will rest.

C28




Thinking about the Past

Certain moments will never change nor stop being—
My mother’s face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune—
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red-hired girl with wide mouth—Eleanor—
Forgotten thirty years--her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery’s, a small, caught bird—
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the ends of songs…


Donald Justice

J64




Oh swimmers
come back to us,
oh salmon people
altered by purity
of purpose, altered
by love and by lust
your flanks burning
red with desire
and with divinity,
your noses oh men
of the sea hooked
like the hawk’s beak,
scrambling in a drought year
through shallows, wriggling
walking almost, running legless
over the stones, waiting
for rain in the shadow
of tree shaded pools.

Oh swimmers
oh lovers
of the long way.


From COHO by Michael Whitt

S35

Just between you and me, Sister,
Will you marry me?
Most of it’s already done:
I know your nipples and that spot on your thigh,
You know my scar.
We own each other’s surfaces and holes,
Possess the mossy smell of baby teeth,
The place we store our secret words,
The sight of Daddy’s parts,
Mum’s breasts floating flatly in her bath
And the teardrops she washed from the chandelier.

Now I love our skin,
It’s texture of mirrors with a fading glaze,
Blue streams on the backs of our hands,
And I love our genetic compulsions
For earliness, lists, silence and scorn.
And I love our disputes, a rush of ire,
A skip of the heart and a quick peace.

We could let the brothers in once in a while,
And the life we’ve left might be worth discussing.
But we’ve plighted our troth.
Let’s elope.


JWBRogers

O6



Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.


T.S.Eliot

JA18


Our hands:
Grandmother’s, mother’s, and mine.
The same topography:
Brown backs, blue veins, gold bands.
The same work:
Turn the hem, turn the page, turn the earth.
The same motion:
To arrange, to direct, to align.
The same language:
Refusal, dismissal, farewell.

Hold hands a little longer, she yours and you mine,
I hers for a circle: thus we intertwine,
Until our strength falters, we loosen our grasp,
And I, empty-handed and idle, am last.


JWB Rogers

S38

We are capable of resting in a state of mind in which we can abide in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Keats called this: negative capability.

B10

The ox desires a saddle;
the packhorse eyes the plows.
The she-goat fancies grazing;
the heifer learns to browse.
The dairyman would like a desk;
the stockbroker, some cows.
The married long for freedom;
the single, wedding vows.


Deborah Warren

S39

Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
Hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held you dear,
Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering...
Day that I loved, day that I loved, the night is here.

R. Brooke

A20

G8

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer,
where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air,
and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.


Whitman

S29

January

The days are short,
the sun a spark
hung thin between
the dark and dark.

The river is
a frozen place
held still beneath
the trees’ black lace.



Updike

V5

Demain, des l'aube, a l'heure ou blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la foret, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixes sur mes pensees,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbe, les mains croisees,
Triste, e le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyere en fleur.


V.Hugo

V60

D22

Memories of Dogtown

lkj




















Ja15

Si no pudimos ser unanimes
moviendo tanto nuestras vidas,
tal vez no hacer nada una vez,
tal vez un gran silencio pueda
interrumpir esta tristeza,
este no entendernos jamas
y amenazarnos con la muerte,
tal vez la tierra nos ensenie
cuando todo parece muerto
y luego todo estaba vivo.

Neruda

If we were not so singleminded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us, as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.

F1

JA16

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, and hide in cooling trees,
a voice will run from hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
that is the grasshopper’s—he takes the lead in summer luxury,—
he has never done with his delights; for, when tired out with fun,
he rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
on a lone winter evening, when the frost has wrought a silence,
from the stove there shrills the cricket’s song,
in warmth increasing ever, and seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
the grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

John Keats

D11

Twyla Tharp wrote that when you create something, whether it's a dance, a novel, or a painting, you have to keep its "spine" in mind the whole way through. By "spine" she meant: the statement you make to yourself outlining your intentions for the work. "If you stick to your spine, the piece will work. When you lose your way, it will show you the way home.
You might not think you want spine. You might think you don't need a supporting mechanism for the art you're constructing, a controlling image, a collateral idea to guide you.
You might think that getting lost is a big part of the adventure.

You might think that,
but you'd be wrong."

G17