from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
Abraham Lincoln, president
Month: September 2018
from a line by Wang Po: for Mike Harrison
where the road forks
my feet went left
yours right
decades past
miles seas continents apart
lost to each other
now found again
where the roads meet
in space
thinking of a line by Tu Fu
no easy task
shaking the dust
from one’s eyes
from one’s heart
Spending the Night at Yunmen Temple Pavilion by Sun T’i
At Incense Pavilion below East Peak
the flowers in the mist were from another world
I held up a lantern on a deep mountain night
and pulled back the curtain on a lakeland fall
the swans stayed behind on the walls
the Dipper and the Ox spent the night in the window
the road to Heaven seemed so close again
I dreamed I was traveling with clouds
translated by Red Pine
“Life and art are not two different things”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“Life and art are not two different things.“
Felix Mendelssohn, composer
Do Me That Love by Kenneth Patchen
Do me that love
As a tree, tree
Where birds and wind
Sing though they know
How real night is
And no one can
Go on for long
In any way
Do me that love
Do me that love
As the rain, rain
That has voices
In it, the greats’
And fools’, poor dead
From old weathers–
Lives considered
And rejected
As ours will be.
The rain comes down
And flowers grow
On the graves of
Our enemies
Do me that love
“existing societies… are not owners of the earth. They… have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
these emails
these emails
that are voices
from the past
refresh both joy
and sorrow
oh friends oh lovers
long buried here
in my memory
your words
echo long
within the chambers
of what is left
of my heart
it’s your eyes
it’s your eyes
really
that seem to know
something
I’ve forgotten
and now
find it nagging
at a corner
of my mind
Song on Being Too Lazy to Get Up by Shao Yung
Half remembering, yet not remembering, just waked up from a dream;
almost sad, but not sad, a time when I’m feeling lazy,
I hug the covers, lie on my side, not wanting to get up yet–
beyond the blinds, falling petals fly by in tangled flurries.
translated by Burton Watson
Leonard Durso 