Tilde Aune

“An old man crawls on the roof, risking the only thing he still has, his life, to feed himself. Below him live men much younger, listening to the radio, watching TV or sleeping. They’ve sold their wives and children. They can’t stand the heat with their shirts on,’ says Plato. ‘That’s the contrast. That’s what turns life into art.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“He witnessed water’s birth as ice, as he stood on one of Saturn’s moons, enraptured by the blizzards. He blinked with icy lashes as he saw the world through her eyes. Like a newborn who perceives it all as one being, she saw the stars and orbits as her limbs. He followed her journey to earth, couched in the ribs of a meteor. He saw her grow into the mightiest ocean the planet would ever see. Standing on the fringes of an atoll, he was hit by glassy waves, rhythmically drenching his calves, wetting his thighs and waist as he walked in deeper, until he was entirely submerged in her tale. She nurtured life in her womb, parasites committed to the blasphemy of evolution—a ceaseless separation, never to come together again.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“What is it your friend Marx says? That philosophers can talk about the world in many ways but no one can change it?”
“No. He says that philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Of what use are a dead man’s poems to this world?” the Poet asked.
“None. Which is why I can translate them freely.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing