[Image: ‘Circe,’ by user TheoJunior on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). About its subject, he caption supplied by the artist says only (and wryly), “Aeaean weaver, zookeeper, apothecary, and charming hostess.” You can read more about TheoJunior’s series of molded polymer-clay faces at his/her Flickr “about” page.]
From whiskey river:
In the Street
Here we are, on top of the utopian arc. The water is shallow. An oil spill shimmers on the surface like a lens catches light and folds it in front of a mirror. If someone stands next to you, they are there, even when outside the picture. Which makes total obscurity relative to luck and such. Unlike the law, architecture lasts. A façade, like an ideal, can be oppressive unless balanced by a balcony on which you can stand and call down to those in the street, Come over here and look up at us. Aren’t we exactly what you wanted to believe in?
(Mary Jo Bang [source])
…and:
The world has signed a pact with the devil; it had to. It is a covenant to which every thing, even every hydrogen atom, is bound. The terms are clear: if you want to live, you have to die; you cannot have mountains and creeks without space, and space is a beauty married to a blind man. The blind man is Freedom, or Time, and he does not go anywhere without his great dog Death. The world came into being with the signing of the contract. A scientist calls it the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A poet says, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age.” This is what we know. The rest is gravy.
(Annie Dillard [source])
…and:
Breath
When you see them
tell them I am still here,
that I stand on one leg while the other one dreams,
that this is the only way,that the lies I tell them are different
from the lies I tell myself,
that by being both here and beyond
I am becoming a horizon,that as the sun rises and sets I know my place,
that breath is what saves me,
that even the forced syllables of decline are breath,
that if the body is a coffin it is also a closet of breath,that breath is a mirror clouded by words,
that breath is all that survives the cry for help
as it enters the stranger’s ear
and stays long after the world is gone,that breath is the beginning again, that from it
all resistance falls away, as meaning falls
away from life, or darkness falls from light,
that breath is what I give them when I send my love.
(Mark Strand [source])
