The sweet little things.
The autumn leaves are falling like rain.
Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
And you, you are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups at my table.
- T'ang Dynasty
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All the words have leaped into air like the cards
in Alice, like birds flying, forming, re-
forming, swerving and rising, and each word
says it is love. The cat says it is love.
It says, 'I am and I love.' And the fawn
in the forest who lost his name, he eats
from your hand. He tells you, 'My name is love.'
And all the White Knight's baggage rattles, and cries
it is love. And even the tiger-lily, even the rose
say only that they are themselves. And they say
they are love. All the little words say
they are love, the space in between, the link
and logic of love. And I can make no headway
in this heady grammar, and suddenly
and here, you are, I am, and we love. - Gillian Hanscombe & Suniti
Namjoshi
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When I have fears that I may cease to be,
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
- John Keats
He Wishes for The Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue
and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the
cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only by dreams; I have spread my dreams
under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-Echo
"Too see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour...."
-William Blake
Leap
It was the camomile tea that clinched it. That and the moon, hanging on our every
word.
And it seemed then, in that dark garden, As you rested lightly on the step below me,
Legs folded underneath the weight of yourself, That time had flapped its wings and circled
The world, and had decreed this as the moment To perch upon. We held our breath.
And you smiled, and your voice was soft.
Madness
We work in the dark.
We do what we can.
We give what we have.
Our doubt is our passion,
and our passion is our task
The rest is the madness of art.
-- Henry James
An Elegy
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die.
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light -
Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.
- Ibid., epitaph for his daughter
Apollo stood on a high cliff.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"It's too high," they said.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"We'll fall," they said.
"Come to the edge," he said.
And they did.
And he pushed them. And they flew.
Love and Beauty
It is the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance.
It is the dream afraid of waking
that never takes a chance.
It is the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give.
And the soul afraid of dying
that never learns to live.
-- Bette Midler, The Rose
