José

“Theatre Impressions

For me the tragedy's most important act is the sixth:
the raising of the dead from the stage's battlegrounds
the straightening of wigs and fancy gowns
removing knives from stricken breasts,
taking nooses from lifeless necks,
lining up among the living
to face the audience.

The bows, both solo and ensemble
the pale hand of the wounded heart,
the curtseys of the hapless suicide,
the bobbing of the chopped-off head.

The bow in pairs-
rage extends its arm to meekness,
the victim's eyes smile at the torturer,
the rebel indulgently walks besides the tyrant.

Eternity trampled by the golden slipper's toe.
Redeeming values swept aside with the swish of a wide-
brimmed hat.
The unrepentant urge to start all over tomorrow.

Now enter, single file, the hosts who died early on,
in Acts 3 and 4, or between scenes.

The miraculous return of all those without a trace.
The thought that they've been waiting patiently offstage
without taking off their makeup
or their costumes
moves me more than all the tragedy's tirades.

But the curtain's fall is the most uplifting part,
the things you see before it hits the floor:
here one hand quickly reaches for a flower,
there another hand picks up a fallen sword.
Only then one last, unseen hand
does its duty
and grabs me by the throat.”
― Wisława Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

“Only after I've lived more or better, will I manage to depreciate what is human," she sometimes told him. "Human-me. Human-mankind separated into individuals. To forget them because my relationships with them can only be sentimental. If I seek them out, I demand or give them the equivalent of the same old words we always hear, 'fraternity,' 'justice.' If They had any real value, it wouldn't be because they are the apex, but the base of a triangle. They'd be the condition rather than the fact itself. Yet they end up occupying all of our mental and emotional space precisely because they are impossible to realize, they are against nature. They are fatal, in spite of everything, in the state of promiscuity in which we live. In this state hatred becomes love, which is really no more than the quest for love, never attained except in theory...”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

“Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns
and stretchings—
Amble out for love”
― Kobayashi Issa, Japanese Haiku

“In truth, it is a quarrel they are going to settle.
But it is one that for the past hundreds of years has mortally separated Algiers and Oran. Back in history, these two North African cities would have already bled each other white as Pisa and Florence did in happier times.
Their rivalry is all the stronger just because it probably has no basis. Having every reason to like each other, they loathe each other proportionally.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays