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14,285 voters
“The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.”
―
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.”
―
“Four billion people on this earth
but my imagination is still the same.
It's bad with large numbers.
It's still taken by particularity.
It flits in the dark like a flashlight,
illuminating only random faces
while all the rest go by,
never coming to mind and never really missed.”
― Poems New and Collected
but my imagination is still the same.
It's bad with large numbers.
It's still taken by particularity.
It flits in the dark like a flashlight,
illuminating only random faces
while all the rest go by,
never coming to mind and never really missed.”
― Poems New and Collected
“Somewhere out there the world must have an end.”
―
―
“Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.”
―
―
“Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
It must eat and breath air and sleep,
It has thin skin and blood right underneath,
An adequate stock of teeth and nails,
Its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it is shuddered
Before the founding of Rome and after,
In the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it’s just the earth that’s grown smaller,
And whatever happens seems on the other side of the wall.
Nothing has changed.
It’s just that there are more people,
Besides the old offenses, new ones have appeared,
Real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
But the howl with which the body responds to them,
Was, and is, and ever will be a howl of innocence
According to the time-honored scale and tonality.
Nothing has changed.
Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances,
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks, and tries to pull away
Its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
It turns blue, swells, salivates, and bleeds.
Nothing has changed.
Except of course for the course of boundaries,
The lines of forests, coasts, deserts, and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
Disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
Alien to itself, elusive
At times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
While the body is and is and is
And has no place of its own.”
―
The body is susceptible to pain,
It must eat and breath air and sleep,
It has thin skin and blood right underneath,
An adequate stock of teeth and nails,
Its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it is shuddered
Before the founding of Rome and after,
In the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it’s just the earth that’s grown smaller,
And whatever happens seems on the other side of the wall.
Nothing has changed.
It’s just that there are more people,
Besides the old offenses, new ones have appeared,
Real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
But the howl with which the body responds to them,
Was, and is, and ever will be a howl of innocence
According to the time-honored scale and tonality.
Nothing has changed.
Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances,
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks, and tries to pull away
Its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
It turns blue, swells, salivates, and bleeds.
Nothing has changed.
Except of course for the course of boundaries,
The lines of forests, coasts, deserts, and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
Disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
Alien to itself, elusive
At times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
While the body is and is and is
And has no place of its own.”
―
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