calyptapis - Tumblr blog

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— BERTOLT BRECHT, trans. John Willett.

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Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

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Mosaic of medieval stained glass

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SEAN MUNDY / “CYCLES” / 2020

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different viewpoints

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whatever was left, that was ours for a while.

sunrise - louise glück

LizzieOrmian.redbubble.com

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Christine Sefolosha (Swiss, 1955) - Phantom Tree (2005)

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Louise Glück, “Bridal Piece” from Firstborn

Text ID under cut

Our honeymoon / He planted us by / Water. It was March. The moon / Lurched like searchlights, like / His murmurings across my brain – / He had to have his way. As down / The beach the wet wind / Snored . . . I want / My innocence. I see / My family frozen in the doorway / Now, unchanged, unchanged. Their rice congeals / Around his car. He locked our bedroll / In the trunk for laughs, later, at the deep / End. Rockaway. He reaches for me in his sleep.

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«(…) There we have someone who would gladly be a mighty ruler, but you can tell just by looking at him that he will never have the chance to dominate or order around. Another wants nothing more than to be taken care of and finds himself forever the caretaker. It’s a strange game, life. We see snow-white butterflies fluttering here and there: they are thoughts, whose fate is to flutter, to tire, to fall. The air is full of unspeakable longing, hot with renunciation. Some ways off stands the father, and when one of the children of man dashes over to him to complain about something, he smiles and bids the child return to the circle of the dance. When a child dies, that child’s game is over. The others play on, though, on and on.»

Robert Walser, “Circle Dance” transl. from German by Damion Searls

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Rita Dove, "The Spring Cricket Observes Valentine’s Day" from Playlist for the Apocalypse

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“Winter is the only true season of touching. In winters, no matter how efficiently you dress up, a raindrop will find you. Fogs will enshroud you and leave their wetness on your face. Dry, cold air will crack your lips. As you inhale, mist will touch your nostrils and the inside of your throat. You will feel winter’s touch on the backs of your ears. Winter’s physicality reaches everywhere.”

— Nikita Arora, A history of botany and colonialism touched off by a moss bed

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raúl zurita, inri

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“I remember what it was… to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting - everything - was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.”

— Another Country, James Baldwin. (via florencarnada)

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Albert Camus, The Wrong Side and the Right Side (L’Envers et l’Endroit), 1937: Death in the Soul; from Personal Writings (translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy and Justin O’Brien)

Text ID: It was days since I had uttered a single word and my heart was bursting with the cries and protests I had stifled. If anyone had opened his arms to me, I would have wept like a child.

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Mark Strand, "Lines for Winter" from The Late Hour

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Ada Limón, from “Dead Stars.” [ID in alt text]

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Carol Ann Duffy, from The World’s Wife; “Thetis”

[Text ID: “I shrank myself / to the size of a bird in the hand / of a man. / Sweet, sweet, was the small song / that I sang, / till I felt the squeeze of his fist.”]