The world is a complex fatigue.
—Hayden Carruth, “August First”
Whatever asks, heart kneels and offers to bear.
—Jane Hirshfield, “What the Heart Wants”
Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them
Did not board ship with grief among their maps? —
Till it seemed men never go anywhere, they only leave
Wherever they are, when the dying begins.
—Mary Oliver, “No Voyage”
I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way.
—John Ashbery, “The New Spirit”
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
—Pablo Neruda, “Oh Earth Wait For Me”
Fold your wings, my soul,
those wings you had spread wide
to soar to the terrestrial peaks
where the light is most ardent:
it is for you simply to wait
the descent of the Fire –supposing it to be willing
to take possession of you.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn to the Universe
How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from the bird which flies out of its ashes,
that for a man,
as he goes up in flames, his one work
is
to open himself, to be
the flames?
—Galway Kinnell, “Another Night in the Ruins”
It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.
—E.M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born
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