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“One can live without having survived”
―
―
“the silence of God is God.”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“In the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.”
― Gathering the Tribes
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.”
― Gathering the Tribes
“The worst is over, the worst is yet to come”
―
―
“There is a cyclone fence between ourselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.”
― The Country Between Us
we hover in a calm protected world like netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.”
― The Country Between Us
“It is not your right to feel powerless.
Better people than you were powerless.”
― The Country Between Us
Better people than you were powerless.”
― The Country Between Us
“...the Roanoke valley
where mountains hold the breath
of the dead between them and lift
from each morning a fresh bandage of mist.”
― The Country Between Us
where mountains hold the breath
of the dead between them and lift
from each morning a fresh bandage of mist.”
― The Country Between Us
“What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.”
―
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.”
―
“These ruins are to the future what the past is to us”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“That from which these things are born
That by which they live
That to which they return at death
Try to know that”
―
That by which they live
That to which they return at death
Try to know that”
―
“Memory a wind passing through the blood trees within us”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“It was as if he had stood me squarely before the world, removed the blindfold, and ordered me to open my eyes.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“The memories are few and like dreams of her life resuming a muted sound of snow falling into itself.”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“People think that what happens to someone else has nothing to do with them. They think that what happens in one place doesn’t matter any place else.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“When you are talking about stupidity, only the military knows the meaning of the word infinite”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.”
―
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.”
―
“...it was becoming obvious that the war he had been anticipating, "in three to five years" might have already begun, as many wars do begin, he said, not with a major event reported in the news but with sufferings barely noticed: an unjust law, a murder, a peaceful protest march attacked by police. It begins, according to Leonel, with poverty endured by many and corruption benefiting the few, with crimes unpunished, a hardening of positions, the failure of peaceful means of appeal and redress.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“The tanks dug ladders in the earth no one was able to climb In every war someone puts a cigarette in the corpse’s mouth And the corpse The corpse is never mentioned In the hours before his empty body was found It was this, this life that he longed for, this that he wrote of desiring, Yet this life leaves out everything for which he lived”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“Before enduring it we will endure it.”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“Do Americans think of us? So she began as we squatted over the toilets: If you want, I’ll tell you, but nothing I say will be enough.”
― The Angel of History
― The Angel of History
“I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“It isn’t the risk of death and fear of danger that prevent people from rising up,” Leonel once said, “it is numbness, acquiescence, and the defeat of the mind. Resistance to oppression begins when people realize deeply within themselves that something better is possible.” He also said that what destroys a society, a state, a government, is corruption—that, and the use of force, which is always applied against those who have not been convinced or included. He was always talking about corruption: trying to prevent it, expose it, eradicate it. He was dedicated to the task of bringing the sin to the eye. “This is the stage of denunciation,” he said, “which precedes the revolutionary moment.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“Prayer"
The recollections of a whole life, the consciousness of spiritual existence, and all which is mightiest and deepest in our nature, become brighter, even in opposition to extreme bodily languor. In the immediate vicinity of death, the mind enters on an unaccustomed order of sensations, a region untrodden before, from which few, very few travelers have returned, and from which those few have brought back but vague remembrances; sometimes accompanied with a kind of homesickness for the higher sphere of which they had then some transient prospect. Here, amidst images, dim images, of solemnity or peace, of glory or of terror, the pilgrim pursues his course alone, and is lost to our eye.”
― Blue Hour
The recollections of a whole life, the consciousness of spiritual existence, and all which is mightiest and deepest in our nature, become brighter, even in opposition to extreme bodily languor. In the immediate vicinity of death, the mind enters on an unaccustomed order of sensations, a region untrodden before, from which few, very few travelers have returned, and from which those few have brought back but vague remembrances; sometimes accompanied with a kind of homesickness for the higher sphere of which they had then some transient prospect. Here, amidst images, dim images, of solemnity or peace, of glory or of terror, the pilgrim pursues his course alone, and is lost to our eye.”
― Blue Hour
“I take off my shirt, I show you.
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.
My hair is the color of chopped maples.
My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.
(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)
Skin polished as a Ming bowl
showing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundreds
of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.
In the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.
You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.
You want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying.”
― Gathering the Tribes
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.
My hair is the color of chopped maples.
My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.
(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)
Skin polished as a Ming bowl
showing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundreds
of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.
In the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.
You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.
You want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying.”
― Gathering the Tribes
“Draw, Antonio, draw, said Michelangelo to one of his apprentices. Draw and do not waste time.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“You are always asking me why the people don’t do something, why they put up with this brutality, why they don’t rise up against it, this and that. Okay. You’re exhausted, you’re shocked, you’re sick to your stomach, and you feel dirty. These things are what people feel every day here—and you expect them to get themselves organized? You expect them to fight back? Could you fight back at this moment?”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“Go toward the light always, be without ships.”
― In the Lateness of the World: Poems
― In the Lateness of the World: Poems
“Lesson number four: If someone promises to do great things, ask them first for something small, like a bridge or a cow.”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“You tell me you are a poet. If so, our destination is the same.
I find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.
I will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.”
―
I find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.
I will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.”
―
