#Jack Gilber

[transvaluator]

Kochan #8

Michiko Nogami (1946-1982) I try to see the smokestack against the sky and see the sky with a chimney in the way. A chimney and a winter sky and a woman not there. Smokestack and sky. This and that. Merely this and that. Is she more apparent because she is not any more forever? Is her whiteness more white because she was the color of pale honey? A smokestack making the sky more visible. A dead woman filling the whole world. Michiko said, The roses you gave me kept me awake with the sound of their petals falling.

[grande-caps]

Sceencaps || Problem Child 2 (1991) GALLERY LINK : [x] Quality : BluRay Screencaptures Amount : 2024 files Resolution : 1920x1080px

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[chrisengel]

“The Danger of Wisdom” ‘We learn to live without passion. To be reasonable. To go hungry’

  ~ Jack Gilber

[principleofplenitude]

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

Jack Gilbert, “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”

[afindingplace]

The Great Fires

Love is apart from all things. Desire and excitement are nothing beside it. It is not the body that finds love. What leads us there is the body. What is not love provokes it. What is not love quenches it. Love lays hold of everything we know. The passions which are called love also change everything to a newness at first. Passion is clearly the path but does not bring us to love. It opens the castle of our spirit so that we might find the love which is a mystery hidden there. Love is one of many great fires. Passion is a fire made of many woods, each of which gives off its special odor so we can know the many kinds that are not love. Passion is the paper and twigs that kindle the flames but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes because it tries to be love. Love is eaten away by appetite. Love does not last, but it is different from the passions that do not last. Love lasts by not lasting. Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire for his sins. Love allows us to walk in the sweet music of our particular heart.

-- Jack Gilbert