Category: language

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I seek for rhythmic whisperings
Where noises bandy—
For life I listen wistfully
In footless banter.

I cast wide nets and tentative
In lakes of sorrow.
I go toward final tenderness
By pathways sordid.

I look for dewdrops glistering
In falsehood’s gardens.
I save truth’s globules glistening,
From dust-heaps garnered.

I fain would fathom fortitude
Through years of wormwood—
And pierce the mortal fortalice,
Yet live, a worldling.

My cup, through ways impassable,
To bear, untainted;
By tenebrous bleak passages
To joy attaining.

Zinaida Gippius, translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky

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What must be valued
I’m learning,

in clarity and in error,
are spaces

where
feelings are held.

Spaces, Jenny Johnson

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The Haiti That Still Dreams. The country is being defined by disaster. What would it mean to tell a new story? By Edwidge Danticat. New Yorker, April 23, 202

“Nou se wozo / Menm si nou pliye, nou pap kase.” Even if we bend, we will not break.

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when a gaze picks out
the shape of a deer
from the surrounding moor
it is as if something
within the deer
an embarrassment of content
had risen to the surface
[…]

Flight Across the Heather, Thomas A. Clark

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For the sword outwears its sheath,

   And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

   And love itself have rest.

So We’ll Go No More a Roving, Byron

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“a kind of purple/blue that makes you think not of sadness but of wonder” Kincaid

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“you can fall for what isn’t there already

[…]

Best believe in the world more than yourself.

Diptych, Kevin Young

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Christopher Stephen on A Landscape longed for at CEAM for Burnaway (041524).

“… an expanded collection of artists who address identity, belonging, and historical reverence through the intricate visual metaphors associated with the garden.

[…]

A Landscape Longed For: The Garden as Disturbance expressly reminds one that shared human histories of time and place are imbedded in the dirt.  The timeless adage “When in doubt, turn to nature”, serves as a poignant reminder of the deep-rooted connections between the garden and the human experience. Plants, like people, hold histories often obscured by time or memory, yet their significance is felt empathetically. The exhibition offers an enriching garden that nourishes both the physical and spiritual needs of those who take the time to walk, look, and contemplate, among the plants.”