McKenzie

“And of all the things on my mind this evening,
words weigh the least,
Death weighs the most,
and your voice's body
beneath my voice's moving hand
is a green agent of freedom and order,
best friend to my earth and my ache.

Of all the things keeping me from sleep,
words weigh too much, yet not enough.
Time weighs nothing at all,
but I can't bear it.
And your body, burdened by minutes
and ancient rites, is my favorite sad song.

One wave that gives rise to three, shoulder, hip, and knee,
your body is the Lord's pure geometry.
Disguised as Time, your body is tears, lilies,
and the mouth of the falls.

And of all the things we're dying from tonight,
being alive is the strangest.
Surviving our histories is the saddest.
Time leaves the smallest wounds,
and your body, a mortal occasion
of timeless law,
is all the word I know.”
― Li-Young Lee, The Undressing: Poems

“Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, 'it's been an honor to serve my country.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I see, he said, that you no longer
wish to resume your former life,
to move, that is, in a straight line as time
suggests we do, but rather (here he gestured toward the lake)
in a circle which aspires to
the stillness at the heart of things,
though I prefer to think it also resembles a clock.”
― Louise Gluck, Winter Recipes from the Collective