Quotes By Author: Jack Gilbert
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“The Abandoned ValleyCan you understand being alone so longyou would go out in the middle of the nightand put a bucket into the wellso you could feel something down theretug at the other end of the rope?”
“We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.”
“How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,and frightening that it does not quite.”
“Waking At NightThe blue river is grey at morningand evening. There is twilightat dawn and dusk. I lie in the darkwondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.”
“Failing and Flying”Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.It’s the same when love comes to an end,or the marriage fails and people saythey knew it was a mistake, that everybodysaid it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anythingworth doing is worth doing badly.Like being there by that summer oceanon the other side of the island whilelove was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights thatanyone could tell you they would never last.Every morning she was asleep in my bedlike a visitation, the gentleness in herlike antelope standing in the dawn mist.Each afternoon I watched her coming backthrough the hot stony field after swimming,the sea light behind her and the huge skyon the other side of that. Listened to herwhile we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people whocame back from Provence (when it was Provence)and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,but just coming to the end of his triumph.”
“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.”
“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”
“A Brief for the DefenseSorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.”