1 Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water? 2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed…
Read the note →Beautiful 🤩
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.
Those first 4 lines!
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage A Dove house filld with Doves and Pigeons Shudders Hell thro all its regions A Dog starvd at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the State A Horse misused upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood Each outcry of the hunted Hare A fibre from the Brain does tear A Skylark wounded in the wing A Cherubim does cease to sing The Game Cock clipd and armd for fight Does the Rising sun affright Every Wolfs and Lions howl Raises from Hell a Human Soul
What a beautiful poem.
Read the note →The awesome Frederik Gieschen shared this wonderful prayer on Substack:
Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery,
teach me how to trust
my heart,
my mind,
my intuition,
my inner knowing,
the senses of my body,
the blessings of my spirit.
Teach me to trust these things
so that I may enter my Sacred Space
and love beyond my fear,
and thus Walk in Balance
with the passing of each glorious Sun.
According to certain tribes, the Sacred Space is between the exhalation and inhalation of the breath. To Walk in Balance is to have Heaven (spirituality) and Earth (physicality) in Harmony.”
Oooh, what a delightful collection of verse. Emily Dickinson is a goddamn genius. Sooo good.
I DWELL in Possibility
A fairer house than Prose,
More numerous of windows,
Superior of doors.Of chambers, as the cedars—
Impregnable of eye;
And for an everlasting roof
The gables of the sky.Of visitors—the fairest—
For occupation—this—
The spreading wide my narrow hands
To gather Paradise.
What a beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist. A Psalm of Life Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!— For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal…
Read the note →Pure and sublime poetic beauty. The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed. We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village…
Read the note →God damn it, this is beautiful!
I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.
The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.
My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!
Ufff. What a poem. Each verse feels saturated with the bloody, neglected horrors of our own time — horrors I’m no doubt forcing into it, but can’t help seeing there
Couldn’t stop hearing the echoes of the present.
While loud the red-flecked mouths of cannons sing
And grapeshot whistles under empty sky;
While, red and green, before each preening King,
The massed battalions break, and thousands die;
While flowers bloom and sweet grass grows again,
In splendid sunshine, under summer heat,
And madness grinds a hundred thousand men
Into a steaming pile of rotting meat; …A God smiles down through incense-laden air
At chalices and altars, gold, ornate,
And slowly dozes off to mumbled prayer;
But wakes when black-clad mothers, bowed with grief
And weeping, clink into His silver plate
The few coins in a knotted handkerchief.
I came across George Oppen in this article, and a random Google led me to this poem, and the only word that can succinctly capture my reaction is “dayum!”
Truth also is the pursuit of it:
Like happiness, and it will not stand.
Even the verse begins to eat away
In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;
A wind moves a little,
Moving in a circle, very cold.
How shall we say?
In ordinary discourse—
We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,
The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable
Is the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights
Daily with that predominance
And we have become the present.
We must talk now. Fear
Is fear. But we abandon one another.
What a poem.
Birth is a crime
All men commit;
Life gives them time
To atone for it;
Death ends the rhyme
As the price for it.
From Letters to a Young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke: There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most…
Read the note →Beautiful.
Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down.
You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here.
A choking fog has blanketed the town,
infecting some with calm, the rest with fear.While the squalid throng of mortals feels the sting
of heartless pleasure swinging its barbed knout
and finds remorse in slavish partying,
take my hand, Sorrow. I will lead you out,away from them. Look as the dead years lurch,
in tattered clothes, from heaven’s balconies.
From the depths, regret emerges with a grin.The spent sun passes out beneath an arch,
and, shroudlike, stretched from the antipodes,
—hear it, O hear, love!—soft night marches in.
Beautiful poem.
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplish’d shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise—
Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday—or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through to-day,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.
Beautiful.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Damn. What a powerful poem. If there was ever a poem for the present moment. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is…
Read the note →A beautiful perspective on what poetry can do for us by Leila Chatti: I have always put my faith in poetry, have come to it for answers. (I have never understood the shame, in poets, in admitting this.) And there was no one else, then, to turn to—the world closed, I lived inside a room of books. This is not metaphor.…
Read the note →I learned that the famous line “The heart wants what it wants” is from a famous letter by Emily Dickinson and not Woody Allen.
The full line:
Dear Mary -
When the Best is gone - I know that other things are not of consequence - The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care -
You wonder why I write - so - Because I cannot help - I like to have you know some care - so when your life gets faint for it’s other life - you can lean on us - We wont break, Mary. We look very small - but the Reed can carry weight.
Woody Allen ruined this quote for everyone. Dickinson deserves it back.
Understanding the greatest anonymous poem.
Read the note →Rudyard Kipling, Michael Caine, and the Testicle-Punching Self-Help Industrial Complex I woke up and, like any good, sane, and sensible human being, I picked up my phone, headed to the commode, sat on the toilet, and started my productivity ritual of doomscrolling. And in between my highly productive doomscrolling, I…
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