You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
To be free is to need some fresh air
and to be able to get up and go outside
Don’t say we didn’t warn you
The Following Scan Will Last Four Minutes, Lieke Marsman, Translated from the Dutch by Sophie Collins
Miami reached 100F this afternoon for only the second time since 1895. This ties the all-time high temperature record last reached in 1942. (weather.gov)
You wake amid bursts of darkness
you come back from the vast sleep that holds you
tighter than my arms, each evening
I bare myself and abandon you
to the night’s tall grasses.
The hours that create us
separate us, and I give you up
until dawn comes to dissolve absence.From “Hearts, Books of Love” [“You wake amid bursts of darkness”], Hélène Dorion, Translated from the French by Susanna Lang
Moved out of 11U. Occupant of 27; amenable to auspicious oscillations.
Mary Heilmann.
One small, sensuous catastrophe
makes inklings letters, spelled in a worldly tremble.
it is the hard
edge of things
i am avoiding
the separations
so that i can take my glasses off
and then i cannot tell
which are the leaves
and which the angels
like blake
like that man
who lived with the lepers
not noticing what was sin
and what was grace
visioning visions vision
i take my glasses off
so i can see
i take my glasses off, Lucille Clifton
in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely line
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields.
a dream of foxes, Lucille Clifton
One night I wandered alone from my comrades’ huts;
The grasshoppers chirped softly
In the warm misty evening;
Bracken fronds beckoned from the darkness
With exquisite frail green fingers;
The tree gods muttered affectionately about me,
And from the distance came the grumble of a kindly train.
I was so happy to be alone,
So full of love for the great speechless earth,
That I could have laid my cheek in the wet grasses
And caressed with my lips the hard sinewy body
Of Earth, the cherishing mistress of bitter lovers.
A Moment's Interlude, Richard Aldington
In that great journey of the stars through space
About the mighty, all-directing Sun,
The pallid, faithful Moon, has been the one
Companion of the Earth. Her tender face,
Pale with the swift, keen purpose of that race,
Which at Time’s natal hour was first begun,
Shines ever on her lover as they run
And lights his orbit with her silvery smile.
Sometimes such passionate love doth in her rise,
Down from her beaten path she softly slips,
And with her mantle veils the Sun’s bold eyes,
Then in the gloaming finds her lover’s lips.
While far and near the men our world call wise
See only that the Sun is in eclipse.
A Solar Eclipse, Ella Wheeler Wilcox
It is the smallest idea born in the interior will,
that has no fury nor ignorance,
no intruder but stranger, no scaffold of a plea,
no mote of the hungry, no pitchfork of instinct,
no ladder of pity, no carriage of lust,
no wavering foot on concrete, no parish of bees,
no mountains of coal, no limestone and ash,
no lie poured down the stairs of a house among them,
and this is the will of maker and offspring,
no boot in the hallway indicating more exit
than arrival, more straying than strategy, no more struggle
than contained in my body now, as I wander the rooms,
tearing curtains apart from their windows
separating material from light.
Infinite and Plausible, Tina Chang