June 2012
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“We listen too much to the telephone and we listen too little to nature. The wind...”
– Andre Kostelanetz, Journal-American, 1955 (via litverve)
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To Marianne Moore
If the idea of immortality is excluded, there remains dust, grass, water that forms puddles, the branch from which the bird sings, a certain mystery that reason supposes a fleeting shadow. There remains, in the end, life, the room where a woman pulls on her stockings, the other room, perhaps adjoining, where a couple undress and embrace, and afterwards say to each other: we shall not die.
Carlos...
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“Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely...”
– Paula McLain | The Paris Wife
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Gardening
Pruning the rosebush the ache of the summer heat on my shoulders, the feel of the living stalk between fingers, petals - one, another, then another seek ground, life not strong enough to hold on. Whether it’s blood or petals, the gift of time is a thread I stand on, feet covered in the soft broken soil, shears meet the slight resistance of a living thing.
Jonathan Bohrn
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“The first time I saw a narcissus pushing through ice and thriving, I thought it...”
– Paula McLain | The Paris Wife
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How to Leave the World that Worships Should
Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves. Let junkmail build its castles in the hush of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else. As hours go softly by, let others curse the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep. Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds. Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep. Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,...
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“I don’t know how long we danced that night, back and forth across the living...”
– Paula McLain | The Paris Wife
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Septuagesima
I dream of the silence the day before Adam came to name the animals, The gold skins newly dropped from God’s bright fingers, still implicit with the light. A day like this, perhaps: a winter whiteness haunting the creation, as we are sometimes haunted by the space we fill, or by the forms we might have known before the names, beyond the gloss of things.
John Burnside
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“You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through. You...”
– Paula McLain | The Paris Wife
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This
Today, my love, leaves are thrashing the wind just as pedestrians are erecting again the buildings of this drab forbidding city, and our lives, as I lose track of them, are the lives of others derailing in time and getting things done. Impossible to make sense of any one face or mouth, though each distance is clear, and you are miles from here. Let your pure space crowd my heart, that we might...
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“I want to write one true sentence. […] If I can write one sentence, simple...”
– Paula McLain | The Paris Wife
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Happy the Man
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul or rain or shine The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not Heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
John Dryden
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“It’s one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace...”
– Paula McLain | The Paris Wife 