“…[L]ike a redbud’s crumpled branch you lie beside me
so beautiful, so broken, so like Istanbul
as the curtains lift on the wind
the bird that just flew in
sails out through the other window
what can’t be held in mind―a moment’s pure beauty
it lengthens in language, as it lengthens dims
happiness and the void it leaves behind
miracle’s need of a beholder
ah! impossible to express
the burden of being sole witness
to the moment that will never return.”
―
so beautiful, so broken, so like Istanbul
as the curtains lift on the wind
the bird that just flew in
sails out through the other window
what can’t be held in mind―a moment’s pure beauty
it lengthens in language, as it lengthens dims
happiness and the void it leaves behind
miracle’s need of a beholder
ah! impossible to express
the burden of being sole witness
to the moment that will never return.”
―
“No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.”
―
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.”
―
“Why did you pour tender fire
so quickly, over my life’s cool leaves?
Who pointed the way to you? What flower,
what rock, what smoke showed you where I live?
…while inside, a ferocious love wound around
and around me―till it pierced me with its thorns, its sword,
slashing a seared road through my heart.”
―
so quickly, over my life’s cool leaves?
Who pointed the way to you? What flower,
what rock, what smoke showed you where I live?
…while inside, a ferocious love wound around
and around me―till it pierced me with its thorns, its sword,
slashing a seared road through my heart.”
―
“Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that longs for her; it is always the mortal part alone that longs for everything else. That eager and even ardent longing, directed to a particular woman, is therefore an immediate pledge of the indestructibility of the kernel of our true nature…”
―from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, p. 559”
―
―from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, p. 559”
―
“…This singular reversal may perhaps proceed from the fact that for us the “subject” (since Christianity) is the one who suffers: where there is a wound, there is a subject: die Wunde! die Wunde! says Parsifal, thereby becoming “himself”; and the deeper the wound, at the body’s center (at the “heart”), the more the subject becomes a subject: for the subject is intimacy (“The wound…is of a frightful intimacy”). Such is love’s wound: a radical chasm (at the “roots” of being), which cannot be closed, and out of which the subject drains, constituting himself as a subject in this very draining.”
―from_A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments_. Translated by Richard Howard, p. 189”
― A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
―from_A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments_. Translated by Richard Howard, p. 189”
― A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
Johannes’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Johannes’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Johannes
Lists liked by Johannes

















