All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.from an essay for Writers by Nancy Crampton”

“Mon Dieu, la vie est par trop moche.”

“I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.”

“anyone who has no feelings for animals has a dead heart.”

“لا تملَّ أو تغضبْ أو تكتئبلا وقتَ حتى لذلك،وانظرْ إلى كلِّ ما يُلمَسُ حولك، تَشّربْ فيه جيداً قبلَ أن يتلاشىقبل أن يتحولَ/ تتحولَ إلى محضِ ذكرى”

“Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate…”

“I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,icily free above the stones,above the stones and then the world.If you should dip your hand in,your wrist would ache immediately,your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burnas if the water were a transmutation of firethat feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,then briny, then surely burn your tongue.It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,drawn form the cold hard mouthof the world, derived from the rocky breastsforever, flowing and drawn, and sinceour knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.”

“On No Work of WordsOn no work of words now for three lean months in the bloodyBelly of the rich year and the big purse of my bodyI bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:To take to give is all, return what is hungrily givenPuffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing deathThat will rake at last all currencies of the marked breathAnd count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seasIf I take to burn or return this world which is each man’s work.”

“We didn’t deny the obvious,but we didn’t entirely accept it either.I mean, we said hello to it each morningin the foyer. We patted its little headas it made a mess in the backyard,but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed upat our bedroom door, in its pajamas,unable to sleep, in need of a hug,and we just stared at it like an Armenian,or even worse— hid beneath the coversand pretended not to hear its tiny sobs.”

“I surrendered my identity in your eyes.Now I’m just like everybody else, and it’s so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the waysomeone falling down in the street is funny.I entered a revolving door and emergedas a human being. When you think of meis my face electronically blurred? I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniestsatellite dish in the universe, your smileas the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash, how I once held the soft audience of your hand.I’ve been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silenceso far, without spilling a drop.”

“Come boy, and pour for me a cupOf old Falernian. Fill it upWith wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear;Our host decrees no water here.Let dullards drink the Nymph’s pale brew,The sluggish thin their blood with dew.For such pale stuff we have no use;For us the purple grape’s rich juice.Begone, ye chilling water sprite;Here burning Bacchus rules tonight!”

“الصبيةُ الذين افترشوا طفولتي”أخذوا كلّ مهارات الفرح في قلبيأٌقفلوهوتناهبوا المفتاح”

“you’re already naked in this worldin this timein this lifebeacause your next loveyour next hungeryou next laughterand even your next tearmay never come”

“Here dwell together still two men of noteWho never lived and so can never die:How very near they seem, yet how remoteThat age before the world went all awry.But still the game’s afoot for those with earsAttuned to catch the distant view-halloo:England is England yet, for all our fears–Only those things the heart believes are true.A yellow fog swirls past the window-paneAs night descends upon this fabled street:A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.Here, though the world explode, these two survive,And it is always eighteen ninety-five.”

“العينان الخضراوانمروحتانفى أروقة الصيف الحرانأغنيتان مسافرتانأبحرتا من نايات الرعيانبعبير حنانبعزاء من الهة النور الى مدن الأحزانسنتانوأنا أبنى زورق حبيمتد عليه من الشوق شراعانكى أبحر فى العينين الصافيتينالى جزر المرجانماأحلى أن يضطرب الموج فينسدل الجفنانوأنا أبحث عن مجدافعن ايمان !”