You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
-Margaret Atwood
(the ship that flew)
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You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
-Margaret Atwood
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
(trans. from the Serbian by Charles Simic)
May the wind put out everything for you
except the candle on your grave.
May you not have fish in Fishville,
a bull in Bullsville,
nor a single sheep in Sheepsville.
May you be afraid to meet your brother
without a knife.
May you move from your house to the cemetery.
May you buy a hat
and having nothing to put it on.
May you raise in vain your chin
above the flood.
May you breathe only as much
as your suffering requires.
via anticipatedstranger
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
*aubade, from the Old French “alba,” an early morning song or poem, the motif of which is usually a call for lovers to wake before parting.
from awritersruminations
What runs,
Swirling and leaping into sun, is stone’s
Refusal of the river, not the river.
The weeds grow so thick
You cannot even see the path
That leads to my house:
It happened while I waited
For someone who would not come.
(Source: this-is-a-pen)
Over the heather the wet wind blows,
I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.The rain comes pattering out of the sky,
I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,
My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone.Aulus goes hanging around her place,
I don’t like his manners, I don’t like his face.Piso’s a Christian, he worships a fish;
There’d be no kissing if he had his wish.She gave me a ring but I diced it away;
I want my girl and I want my pay.When I’m a veteran with only one eye
I shall do nothing but look at the sky.
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
