I would never tie you down, not even with garlands of roses. I don't want anything from you that doesn't come from your own impulse, like water from the springs.
Dulce María Loynaz, tr. James O’Connor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; “XLVI”
andrumedus reblogged
tenderness is in the hands ― Carolyn Forché, L’Avventura (1960), Ocean Vuong, The White Ribbon (2009), Hart Crane, Gelatin Silver, Love (2009), Ingeborg Bachmann, Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), Sylvia Plath, Psycho (1960), Rod McKuen (stills by @forhandsthatsuffer)
I hear the psalmic grief
Of church bells and gull cries.
My polar face
Burns above the sea.
Nikolay Klyuev, tr. John Glad, from "Mother Sabbath" in Russian Poetry: The Modern Period, ed. John Glad & Daniel Weissbort
The moon's hands reach down to me
And hoist my sadness to the sky.
Sergey Yesenin, tr. Nigel Stott, from "Winds, winds, winds" in Russian Poetry: The Modern Period, ed. John Glad & Daniel Weissbort
It was the wound itself that angered you,
an early soldier in the army of afflictions
waiting for us, even
in the innocent grass.
Linda Pastan, Almost an Elegy; "Sting"
andrumedus reblogged
Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh) [transcript in ALT]
andrumedus reblogged
latibule-e-deactivated20231012
— Louise Glück Epithalamium from "Descending Figure.”
How well he hid the archeology of grief.
Linda Pastan, Almost an Elegy; "Truce"
andrumedus reblogged
[...] in my poems death was my lover and my lover was death,
Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972: Extracting the Stone of Madness; from ‘The Dream of Death, or The Site of the Poetical Bodies’, tr. Yvette Siegert
: is this what happens to a brain born into war
: a city of broken teeth
: the thuds of falling
: we have learned to sing a child calm in a bomb shelter
: I am singing to her still
Solmaz Sharif, Look; “Drone”
andrumedus reblogged
Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Aren't our bodies mostly wind? And are cursed, like the rest of us, with being able to smell but not see the world we are crazy for.
Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “A Winning Hand”
andrumedus reblogged
pentti holappa, trans. by herbert lomas, from Contemporary Finnish Poetry: “A Step Nearer” // ellen bass, “the thing is” // cheryl strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar // clarice lispector, Água Viva // fleabag // jeanette winterson, the passion
This is the very
essence
of flight—a bird
so swift
that only memory
can capture it.
Linda Pastan, Almost an Elegy; "Memory of a Bird"
andrumedus reblogged
It was a thing of my love, that blood.
C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems; from ‘The Bandaged Shoulder’, tr. Edmund Keeley
There is an ache that begins
in the sound of an old blues song.
It becomes a house where all the lights have gone out
but one.
And it burns and burns
until there is only the blue smoke of dawn
and everyone is sleeping in someone's arms
even the flowers
even the sound of a thousand silences.
And the arms of night
in the arms of day.
Everyone except me.
Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “Summer Night”