Author: dig

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“… shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children

[…]

This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.”

–Maggie Smith, Good Bones.

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“didn’t care for crowds—being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse”

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At the still point of mottled formations and a scruple of compassion.

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“I should wish to live many years, free from hates,
and make my verses, as the rivers
that moisten the earth, fresh and pure.
Lord, give me a path with trees and birds.”

-Alfonso Guillén Zelaya, translated from the Spanish by William George Williams.

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“rung upon rung laddering

across the unspeakable world

[…]

while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love, is what sustained us.”

-Rita Dove, Transit.

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A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw

-Emily Dickinson

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we were sometimes troubled & tired,

sad for no reason, 

& so pretended we were not birds
& fell like stones—

[…]

we told ourselves that this falling—

we would remember. We thought
we would always
be birds. We didn’t know.

-Joe Wilkins

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“Above All things, we want freedom. Freedom to know Our own desires. We want to follow them where they lead.

[…]

Ebry day fishing day, but ebry day no fe catch fish. (Reward does not always follow labour.)

[…]

None but ourselves can free our minds. (Garvey via Marley)”

-Zadie Smith, Wife of Willesden