1.
In which a fly
flew by and sat on a word – not a letter moved. It took to flight,
spreading its wings.
-Adonis, “An Introduction To The History Of The Petty Kings”, 31 (tr. Toorawa)
*
And light entered the lens
-Marisus Borul, “De/Re/flections”
*
On the island, heads full of the sea
what we took to be metaphor was fact;
to write each name and cross it out
did not change a thing, we were there and it was real.
In the holy period of Spring
the moon rises so fast it tears your heart out,
it does not ask anything
making a white path on the water.
-Kelvin Corcoran, “Picture Eight”
*
(the sheer beauty of such bewilderment)
-Gustaf Sobin, “Transparent Itineraries: 1997”
*
Night sky bright beyond language
Lie lightly upon her dreams
-Oslomon, “The Necklace”
*
Come shadow, come, and take this shadow up
-Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
*
Scars sing
To those who know the code
There is nothing aimless
About the bees
That dance amid the roses
-Anthologie de la poesie de Katibo
*
I wonder how many stories the almost invisible traces of dust can tell …
-Bohnchang Koo, “Portraits of Time”
2.
As long as a person is constrained to wait for a time when the creative spirit will inspire him, and then he will create, meditate, sing – this is an indication that his soul has not yet been illuminated.
Surely the soul sings always. It is robed in might and joy, it is surrounded by a noble delight, and the person must raise himself to the height of confronting his soul, of recognizing its spiritual imprints, the rushing of its wings that abound in the majesty of the holy of holies, and he will always be ready to listen to the secret of its holy discourse. Then he will know that it is not at one time rather than another, on one occasion rather than another, that the soul engenders ... wisdom and thought, song and holy meditation. At all times, in every hour …
-Abraham Isaac Kook, “The Soul’s Illumination”, Lights of Holiness
*
With plain words for simple thoughts
did I not touch the heart of
Tao? For I saw a poet,
a man with sticks on his back,
a man listening to music,
and I had not searched for them.
-Michael Hartnett, “Sikong Tu Walks in the Forest”, 18
3.
Nobody is important. Nobody is major. We go to our destiny in the end. I am not in the least bitter over all this. In fact I am always in danger of bursting out laughing.
-Patrick Kavanagh, Self Portrait
*
Mirror shadowing light
Whose face? Whose eyes?
What a handsome dead man
Drowned in the flood of time
-Symmachus Bolzachy, “Epistle to Dante (from Rue du Sabot)”
*
Overheard in a café:
“I don’t want to be anybody’s legislator
“Unacknowledged or otherwise
“I just want to look ‘em in the eye and say, ‘Yo’!”
*
I photographed an execution of seven men and one woman. … One was named Wu Bingyuan, and when he heard he sentence, he looked into the sky and murmured, “This world is too dark”; then he closed his eyes and never in this life reopened them. All eight were … shot in the back of the head … I could smell the fishy smell of blood and brains … As I enlarged the photographs of these executed people, in the dim red light of the darkroom, I quietly spoke to them. I told them, “If your souls are haunted, please don’t haunt me, too. I’m only trying to help. I’m making your pictures because I want to record history. I want people to know that you were wronged.” And until this day – even when I printed the images for this book in New York – I always say that.
-Li Zhengsheng, Red-Color News Soldier
*
Interviewer: Would you like to be read in 5,000 years?
Borul: Yes! That would mean there were still people …
4.
… a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness
-Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 2 (tr. Merwin)
*
… where bathers talk and laugh beneath a midnight moon …
-Sarah Naaktgeboren, re: Cezanne’s Les Grandes Baigneuses
*
Dream dream dream
What can you tell me?
In starlight
At midnight
I sail the sacred river Simulacrum
In my papyrus boat
But when I wake …
But when I wake …
Oh, dream …
-Oslomon, untitled poem
*
Overheard in a café:
“This is not the Matrix, asshole. This is not a simulation. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.”
5.
Who of us would not be glad to lift the veil behind which the future lies hidden …
-David Hilbert, “Mathematical Problems”
*
a doomed man planting tomatoes
backyard of a house he lives in
belongs to somebody else . kneeling
on the earth
his hands move earth
feeling earth .
-Paul Blackburn, “Journal: June, 1971”
*
… the difficult art … of having the courage of one’s feelings.
-Patrick Kavanagh, Self Portrait
*
Keep me in your heart for awhile
-Warren Zevon and Jorge Calderón, “Keep Me In Your Heart”
6.
Dear Joy hello, it is 5:15 a.m.
-Pseudo-Ted
*
The search for love continues even in the face of great odds
-graffiti artist, as quoted by bell hooks
*
Do you remember?
The courtyard was filled with music
And everyone brought food …
-letter from Page Merline-Lou
*
in Nahuatl, one of the names of God is “nearness and togetherness” ( … del cerca y del junto)
-Cecilia Vicuña, “Five Notebooks for Exit Art”
*
And the wind
On top of that mountain
The boulders the trees the lichen
In my language
The word for summer is summer
The word for snow is snow
-Oslomon, “The Word for Snow”
*
I look in the mirror and see
(No, not my self)
I look in the mirror and see
(No, hear) (no, see) your song
-Symmachus Bolzachy “To – (Last Poem)”
7.
What I really wanted was I wanted my life
-The Assassin
*
To live! So natural and so hard
-James Schuyler, “Hymn to Life”
*
[indecipherable]
-Michael Palmer, “Sun”
*
[indecipherable]
-Michael Palmer, “Sun”
*
Overheard in a café:
“That’s funny, coming from you, the Statue of Limitations”
8.
There is only one body
And it is made out of light
-Grenadine Szorora
*
The light
Which is presentaneous
-Symmachus Bolzachy, “Three Hundred Years from Now”
*
With that light I sense my soul once again becoming drunk!
-Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue
*
The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye
-Rodgers and Hammerstein, “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”
*
O poets!
What are we going to do with you?
-from an anonymous Sung-Ting wanka
[Note: Symmachus Bolzachy: b. 1765, Deuxfois, Sabot; disappeared 1793, Paris, presumed victim of the terror. Poet, self-proclaimed revolutionary, self-proclaimed exile (“Byron avant la lettre”); I thought I stole this idea for this thing from Walter Benjamin; alighting on James Schuyler’s “Fauré Ballads” on my way to his great great “Hymn to Life”, I see I stole it from him, too]
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