shams

“അഥവാ ക്ഷമപോലെ നന്മചെ-
യ്തരുളാൻ നോറ്റൊരു നല്ല ബന്ധുവും
വ്യഥപോലറിവോതിടുന്ന സദ്-
ഗുരുവും മർത്യനു വേറേയില്ലതാൻ”
― Kumaran Asan , ചിന്താവിഷ്ടയായ സീത | Chinthavishtayaya Seetha

“May I at least carry, to the boundless possibility contained in the abyss of everything, the glory of my disillusion like that of a great dream, and the splendor of not believing like a banner of defeat; a banner in feeble hands, but still and all a banner, dragged through mud and the blood of the weak but raised high for who knows what reason - whether in defiance, or as a challenge, or in mere desperation - as we vanish into quicksand. No one knows for what reason, because no one knows anything, and the sand swallows those with banners as it swallows those without. And the sand covers everything: my life, my prose, my eternity. I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I only thought
Of lying quiet there where I was thrown
Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her
To prick me to a pattern with her pin,
Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf,
And dry out from my drowned anatomy
The last sea-salt left in me.”
― Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

“I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of... What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge