Last year I saw the blossoms up close
as if for the first time,
the wind scattering them
across the land and over the walls.
I want the flower that could speak on my behalf
to be tattooed on the part of me
that is difficult to see.
I want it to identify me if I leave,
to adorn me and to speak
of my need for decoration.
Amna Muhammad Abu Safat, from Popular and Known to No One (translated by Lena Tuffaha) featured in Poems from Palestine
I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.
Virginia Woolf, from Moments of Being, Autobiographical Writings
easily becoming, through an open eye, monstrous and beautiful.
Patti Smith, from Woolgathering
Alcatraz is really a Wes Anderson movie set
And maybe I will rip out by the roots
my postponed hope for love,
I will remember that the fruit of every
human limit is memory's absence,
which plunges me into becoming...
Alda Merini, from “Will I Be Alone” in Love Lessons: Selected Poetry of Alda Merini (translated by Susan Stewart)
Still full of blood and hopes.
Wislawa Szymborska, from ‘Funeral (I)’ featured in Map: Collected and Last Poems
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
Carol Ann Duffy - “Valentine” featured in Mean Time
My identifying
features are
rapture and despair.
Wislawa Szymborska - from Sky
And too much snowing
and too much silence.
The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts nor traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me.
Anne Sexton, from ‘Letter Written During a January Northeaster’ featured in The Complete Poems
Stay young, always, in the theater of your mind.
Mary Oliver, from ‘Good Morning’ featured in Blue Horses
When Rumi went into the tavern
I followed.
I heard a lot of crazy talk
and a lot of wise talk.
But the roses wouldn’t grow in my hair.
When Rumi left the tavern
I followed.
I don’t mean just to peek at
such a famous fellow.
Indeed he was rather ridiculous with his
long beard and his dusty feet.
But I heard less of the crazy talk and
a lot more of the wise talk and I was
hopeful enough to keep listening
until the day I found myself
transformed into an entire garden
of roses.
Mary Oliver, “RUMI” featured in Blue Horses
I know I've got a death wish. I've never enjoyed my life, I've never liked people. I love the mountains because they are the negation of life, indestructible, inhuman, untouchable, indifferent, as I want to be.
Anna Kavan, from Machines in the Head: Selected Stories
Everything is change, he said, and everything is connected.
Also everything returns, but what returns is not what went away.
Louise Gluck, from “Denial of Death” featured in Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems