Then, as I was waiting, I saw a kite come up over the valley, and I followed it with my eyes as it passed above me into the sunlight high overhead, and I asked myself why, after all, the world was not A Thousand and One Nights, the way it was when I was seven. I heard bagpipes, the goats’ bells, and voices carrying across the slope of roofs and the valley, and I asked myself this question many times over as I watched the kite in the air. We call them flying dragons in Sicily, as somehow they embody China or Persia in the Sicilian sky, with their sapphire and opal colors and their geometry, and watching it I couldn’t help but ask myself why, really, the faith one has at seven doesn’t last forever.
Month: February 2018
from Lisbon by Liliana Ursu
Truth is beyond the song of the free bird,
beyond the dreaming flesh.
To recognize it
beneath this most refined of identities,
you’d have to tear the face from it
by its skin.
translated by the poet, Adam J. Sorkin, & Tess Gallagher
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
from Douglas Moore’s blog Art of Quotation
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
Martin Luther King Jr, in the Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King Jr., Aug 1, 1963, Letter from Birmingham jail
from Mary Tang’s blog Life is But This
The clouds are washed with shades of pink In the valley of the roof the snow is softening On the hill dawn wakes the trees as chill disperses Still clouds of white cleave to two or three peaks Translated by Mary Tang 鄧許文蘭 (c) 2018
via First Fine Dawn by Wang An Shi （ 1021-1086） — Life is But This 命
of heaven
he suggests a small tree
some potted plants
things alive and green
growing on the terrace
a way he says
to give the illusion
of life beyond glass
windows and doors
a gas grill
to barbecue chicken fish corn
some lawn chairs
a table too
an awning for the rain
he says sort of like
stepping into a backyard
to find family friends
beer bottles wine coolers
raised in cheer
a vision
more or less he says
of heaven
“You gotta go in the mud sometimes to figure who you are.”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“You gotta go in the mud sometimes to figure who you are.”
Andy Irons, surfer, 1978-2010
poem by Wang Wei
You who come from my village
Ought to know its affairs
The day you passed the silk window
Had the chill plum bloomed?
translated by Gary Snyder
miles apart
the world clock
tells time
where you are
where I am
the hour
thousands of miles
apart
much like our life
together
yesterday today
tomorrow
from I Say Goodbye to Fan An-ch’eng by Shen Yüeh
Don’t say “One cup of wine.”
Tomorrow will we hold this cup?
And if in dreams I can’t find this road,
how, thinking of you,
will I be comforted?
translated by Lenore Mayhew & William McNaughton
beyond memory
woman of the wind
blowing past my life
where oh where are you going
a quick caress
an emotion brushed
across a cheek
receding beyond
memory
Leonard Durso 