Weekly Edition #45
Art by Theo Kurpershoek
After Paradise by Czeslaw Milosz
Don't run any more. Quiet. How softly it rains
On the roofs of the city. How perfect
All things are. Now, for the two of you
Waking up in a royal bed by a garret window.
For a man and a woman. For one plant divided
Into masculine and feminine which longed for each other.
Yes, this is my gift to you. Above ashes
On a bitter, bitter earth. Above the subterranean
Echo of clamorings and vows. So that now at dawn
You must be attentive: the tilt of a head,
A hand with a comb, two faces in a mirror
Are only forever once, even if unremembered,
So that you watch what it is, though it fades away,
And are grateful every moment for your being.
Let that little park with greenish marble busts
In the pearl-gray light, under a summer drizzle,
Remain as it was when you opened the gate.
And the street of tall peeling porticos
Which this love of yours suddenly transformed.
Other poems I enjoyed reading this week:
“Range after range of mountains.
Year after year after year.
I am still in love.” -Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems "To bomb them,
we mustn’t have heard their music
or known their waterless night watch,
we mustn’t have seen how already
the desert was under constant death bells
ringing over sleeping cribs and dry wells.
We couldn’t have wanted
this eavesdropping
of names we’ve never pronounced
praying themselves towards death.
I try to believe in us—
we must not
have heard
their music." -Foreign Song by Katie Ford
"My way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life,
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end
My peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading
these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts" -Untitled by Samuel Beckett
"To keep our humanity we turn off the news.
To keep healthy we don't read the newspapers.
Or do so once a month. Or twice a year. That's enough.
Otherwise we become rigid, lose our ability to react,
become closed, show our wisdom to this folly in pat phrases,
surface shelters. You know this is the truth.
It's always all there plain to see. A pile
of dead bodies by the roadside: enemy dead.
Slung on top of a truck: 'our' dead. No.
The dead have no country. But, how often should
we watch. Should we forget to walk the clean cold air
of winter. Sit inside, tear all violence out of self,
calm one's self. Save one's own skin, care those ways
& means. Show the face of peace & strength to the
face of lies, the men of the Lie. Do you cry at the
news story, the monotone of facts. Is this a measure.
It is and you want to deny it. You grow weary, your
attention no longer focuses. They have won." -Horror Rations: A Meditation by Jonathan Greene "It’s dusk on a Tuesday in June. A hot wind
bears down and east. In my room, a stranger’s
hairclip lies like a gilded insect beside the sink.
Hours later, it’s still dusk; it will be dusk all night.
Last month, I cut the masking tape from a box my mother left
my sister and me. On the lid, she wrote, Life is hard, not
unbeatable. If I can do it, darlings, so can you. 2 am. A rosy dark
dusting the window, the heat a ladder into sleep." -Chloe Honum's At a Days Inn in Barstow, California
Recommended Listening: Calico Skies - Paul McCartney A Lift - Sea Oleena Attached to Us Like Butcher Wrap - Julie Byrne Candy - Lifafa Best Friend - The Smoking Trees Back In The Tall Grass - Future Islands
Links of the Week:
Ron Padgett's poem How To Be Perfect, illustrated by Jason Novak
Post-a-Nut – Hawaii’s official coconut mailing service
My City, My Dogs (a story about Mumbai's street dogs, illustrated by Sumedha Sah) Dissolving Duality: The Deepening Disciplines of Devendra Banhart
The Peculiar Art of Over Complicating Things
The Toilet Study (A look at what women write in public bathrooms versus men)
GIF by Jessica Riccardi