Sandra's Friend Comments

"Always For the First Time"

Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle
to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It’s a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the
vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the planets stripped
bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough
until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
Your idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interruptions surrounds each of your gestures
In a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that
may well scratch you in the forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the very first time

André Breton (1934)

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To You

What is more beautiful than night
and someone in your arms
that’s what we love about art
it seems to prefer us and stays

if the moon or a gasping candle
sheds a little light or even dark
you become a landscape in a landscape
with rocks and craggy mountains

and valleys full of sweaty ferns
breathing and lifting into the clouds
which have actually come low
as a blanket of aspirations’ blue

for once not a melancholy color
because it is looking back at us
there’s no need for vistas we are one
in the complicated foreground of space

the architects are most courageous
because it stands for all to see
and for a long long time just as
the words “I’ll always love you"

impulsively appear in the dark sky
and we are happy and stick by them
like a couple of painters in neon allowing
the light to glow there over the river

Frank O’Hara, Poetry. (May 1960)

As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty. — Leonard Cohen

Today, from a distance, I saw you,
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer’s retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

— Ted Kooser, “After Years,” Solo: A Journal of Poetry, Premiere Issue. (Solo Press 1996)

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.

sonnet, n.

(NOTE ON THE LEAP: How rough and worn the weight of flight — the soul, when gathered, forms its own twinned claw and wing, each severed arc, the nape — all grown inside the body, left. Alone with loss, life rises: emblazoned air, trembling star of made faith. The fall that forms in the gut blooms in the arms before the mind, remembering how dangerous and hard the world is when shut, opens its doors so air can cool what light arrives. The chest unhinges, strong from panic, and the loch that is the heart begins to fit. The wind grows sturdier, its skin gigantic. The room that was the source becomes the field, opening out, the stage a hoard revealed.)
— Billy Merrell, The Proposals

— David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)

In the violence of overcoming, in the disorder of my laughter and my sobbing, in the excess of raptures that shatter me, I seize on the similarity between a horror and a voluptuousness that goes beyond me, between an ultimate pain and an unbearable joy! — Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros. (City Lights Publishers January 1, 2001) Originally published 1961.

Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping… waiting… and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir… open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us… guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love… the clarity of hatred… the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we’d be truly dead. — Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2 Episode 17 “Passion.” (1998)

"(A Study in Light and Dark)"

The glow, back over the common, comes from the railway:
that’s the Church candle, been burning now quite a number of years:
there, that’s the light the lover flicks
as he follows the joys of consummation with the joys of a cigarette:
that light was the flash as a man shot himself:    
that’s a searchlight feeling for bombers:
there, the light appears as the squinting wife regards the fuddled husband:
these are twin headlights of a capitalist’s car:
this, the gaslight of a trodden worker who would tread:
that’s the light of a cinema:     
that’s the light of Mars that’s the moon
that’s a match.


     Alone now, in my dark room
    The pebbles cease to drop into the rocking pool    
    And gradually the surface quietens
    Reflecting image of darkest peace and silence.
    No questions catch the clothes
    But only as it were a spreading
    Draws all threads to their finished pattern    
    And you are pieced together bit by bit
    Set against the evening
    Lovely and glowing, like a chain of gold.

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989)

"Unending Love"

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all mans days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems. (Penguin Classics; Revised edition, September 27, 2005) Originally published 1985.

There is always another heart within the heart, for / what we own is never what we have, what we love / is never what we own — Richard Jackson, from “Francis’ Prayer,” Broken Horizons (Press 53, 2018)

Oh trees of life, when will your winter come?
We're not in tune. Not like migratory birds.
Outmoded, late, in haste, we force ourselves on winds
which let us down upon indifferent ponds.
Though we've had to learn how flowering is fading,
somewhere lions still roam,
unaware, in their majesty, of any weakness.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from the “Fourth Elegy,” Duino Elegies. Trans. by David Young. (W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition, June 17, 2006) Originally published 1923.

Take from my palms, to soothe your heart,
a little honey, a little sun,
in obedience to Persephone's bees.

You can't untie a boat that was never moored,
nor hear a shadow in its furs,
nor move through thick life without fear.

For us, all that's left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.

Deep in the transparent night they're still humming,
at home in the dark wood on the mountain,
in the mint and lungwort and the past.

But lay to your heart my rough gift,
this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees
that once made a sun out of honey.

― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems (NYRB Classics; 1st edition, August 31, 2004) Originally published 1972

Touch me. As I am. As you can.
My heart is a bird’s heart just beyond your hand.

— Christian Wiman, from “Flight,” Survival is a Style: Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020)

Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli's vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady,
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?

For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.

— Amy Lowell, “Venus Transiens,” Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)

You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it. ― Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo (Weinstein Books; 1st edition, September 9, 2008)

“Peter Pan"

Hey, Peter Pan
I'm going home now
I've done all I can
Besides I'm grown now
I'll think of you all painted with the night
You sit and watch from somewhere
As one by one the lights go out

I wrote a note to tell you how you matter
When the rain came down
All the letters scattered
And washed away
Drifted off to Never
Where you'll be safe from me now forever

I believe you now when
You say that this will hurt
So I don't have to go and
Play with you in the dirt now

Hey Peter Pan
I'm going home now
I'm all grown up
You're on your own now
I'll think of you all painted with the night
You sit and watch from somewhere
As one by one the lights go out

Patty Griffin, Flaming Red (1998)

"Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes"

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Billy Collins. Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes: Selected Poems. (Picador May 19, 2000)

"Notes on a Candy Cane Tree"

What did I think about before you touched my thigh? Let me say this: I’m going to touch you until my fingers fall off. If my fingers don’t fall off, I will hold your hand even if it’s sweaty. And let me say this: You are lovelier than clouds that look like lovely things. I have only loved a few times and the last time was when you rubbed my neck under the monkey bars. We weren’t much younger than we are now. I still have the same haircut. You still have only one dimple. It’s on your left cheek and it looks like you fell on a pebble. I love that it looks like you fell on a pebble. Let me say this: You taste like candy canes. There was a candy cane tree in my old neighborhood. My neighbor hung candy canes on the branches of the willow and I snatched them in the middle of the night. It was December when I rode my bike the quickest, like I was going somewhere to meet you. I like you more than the candy cane tree. Let me say this: I am uncomfortable in my own skin, so I hold your face. I hold your face and your hips but mostly your face. You have a lovely face. Let me say this: I love you like monsters like scaring little kids. I make a list of words I can use to diagram your body: petite, mellifluous, comely, milk, necessary. Please, forgive the humming; you see I rarely taste candy canes in March. When I don’t taste you I taste sweat. Not good sweat, mind you, sweaty sweat from the men’s locker room. Sometimes I taste pizza, but that’s only because I loved pizza first. Let me say this: My love for pizza was fleeting. I was young and naive and thought that extra toppings meant something. These are fine days because they end with you. Let me just say this: I’m going to kiss you until my lips fall off. If my lips don’t fall off, I will kiss up your spine until I run out of spine. Then I’ll start over.

— Gregory Sherl, [PANK] Magazine 4.09 / September 2009

"The Coming of Light"

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

Mark Strand, The Late Hour ( Knopf 2002)

We are the more—that is the more divine—the greater our capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish. — Miguel de Unamuno

❤

“Wendell Gee"

That's when Wendell Gee
Takes a tug upon the string
That held the line of trees
Behind the house he lived in
He was reared to give respect
But somewhere down the line he chose
To whistle as the wind blows
And listen as the wind blows through the leaves

He had a dream one night
That the tree had lost its middle
So he built a trunk of chicken wire
To try and hold it up
But the wire, the wire turned to lizard skin
And when he climbed it sagged
There wasn't even time to say
Goodbye to Wendell Gee
So whistle as the wind blows
And listen as the wind blows through the leaves

There wasn't even time to say
Goodbye to Wendell Gee
So whistle as the wind blows
And listen as the wind blows through the leaves
If the wind were colors
And if the air could speak
Then whistle as the wind blows
And whistle as the wind blows through the leaves

Fables of the Reconstruction(1985)

before I knew you I kept a sparrow
in a shoebox, I fed it ham and held it to my head to hear it sing,
I called it a radio, it kept the blues away, I called it love and wrote
down all the words,

— Kevin Prufer, from “Ars Poetica,” Kenyon Review<.i> (vol. 36, no. 1, Winter 2014)

O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee;
Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear—lave me all over;
Bathe me, O God, in thee—mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.

O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath.

— Walt Whitman, from “Passage to India,” Leaves of Grass, Originally published: July 4, 1855.

“The Laughing Heart”

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight

Charles Bukowski, Betting On the Muse: Poems and Stories (Ecco, May 31, 2002)

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

— Ezra Pound, “And the Days Are Not Full Enough,” Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. Edited by Michael King. (New Directions Publishing November 17, 1982)

"When You Go Away"

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

W.S. Merwin, The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993)

"Place"

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves

W.S. Merwin, The Rain in the Trees (Knopf 1988)


I hope you have a safe & wonderful year.
With all of my heart--peace.

💙

The Gardener: "[When I go alone at night]"

When I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing,
the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed.

When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle on the trees,
and the water is still in the river like the sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep.
It is my own heart that beats wildly -- I do not know how to quiet it.

When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles and my eyelids droop,
the night darkens, the wind blows out the lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars.
It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light -- I do not know how to hide it.

Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener. (The MacMillan Company 1913)

💜 I don't seem to get notifications for replies, but you're very welcome. I think I've only met one other person who even knew who Frank O'hara was. 💙

Sandra wrote: "Love Frank O'Hara. Thank you for the share Charles!

Charles wrote: ""Morning Poem"

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is ne..."

Love Frank O'Hara. Thank you for the share Charles!

Charles wrote: ""Morning Poem"

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I..."

"Morning Poem"

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. (University of California Press March 31, 1995)

Fragmentary Blue

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

Robert Frost. Harper’s Magazine (July 1920)

Heyyy girl hey! Thanks for accepting my friend-vite. I love making new book friends and enjoy chatting all things books :D I love giving/receiving book recommendations. That being said, you've gotta read An Ember in the Ashes series, Halo trilogy, Before We Were Yours, Reason to Breathe (Breathing) trilogy, The Sea of Tranquility and Tuck Everlasting :) Looking forward to seeing you around GR. Here's to a long and happy friendship!! xoxo

Happy Reading <3

*P.s. I won't get notified if you reply to this message on your profile but I will see it if you reply on my profile (:

Greetings from Regina SK :)
💖 Thank You for your Friendship 💖








💕
“Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.”
― Richard B. Sheridan
💕
✌ Rob ☮

Thanks for the add 💗💗💗

YAY! Thank you for the invite :)

Thanks for the friend invite!! :))

Thanks for the friend add!

Thanks for the add! :)

I Sandra :) Thanks for the friend request :)

Sandra said: "1- I find you got good taste :) 2- We like the same books :) 3- hmm dystopia but I love almost every genre :p 4- The Delirium universe, I don't know why, it just seems a world that I could be a part of. "


Thanx for the friend request :D ANd also, yeah dystopia is interesting :D Have you read Blood of Eden series? :D