from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French, author, aviator
Author: zdunno03
from Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra
Talking to her again was good and perhaps necessary. I told her about the new novel. I said that at first I was keeping a steady pace, but little by little I had lost the rhythm, or the precision.
“Why don’t you just write it all at once?” she advised, as if she didn’t know me, as if she hadn’t been with me through so many nights of writing.
“I don’t know,” I answered. And it’s true, I don’t know.
The thing is, Eme–I think now, a little drunk–I’m waiting for a voice. A voice that isn’t mine. An old voice, novelistic and solid.
Or maybe it’s just that I like working on the book. That I prefer writing to having written. I’d rather stay there, inhabit the time of the book, cohabit with those years, chase the distant images at length and then carefully go over them again. See them badly, but to see them. To just stay there, looking.
translated by Megan McDowell
from On the Border: poem 3 by Kuan Hsiu
In Green Mound Cave, they say
a white wolf dwells.
Once in a while it comes out
looks east, and howls
and howls
and howls.
Paint that for me, if you can,
my painter friend.
translated by J.P. Seaton
from Drinking Wine by T’ao Ch’ien
Perhaps a man, in time, may get beyond the clothing
of conventional ideas. . .
translated by J.P. Seaton
from Songs of My Heart’s Ideals: 3 by Juan Chi
Gently, the breeze at my silken sleeves;
the moon: bright as ice. . .
The rooster, in the treetops, crows.
I’ll saddle my horse: it’s time to go home.
translated by J.P. Seaton
from Songs of My Heart’s Ideals 2: by Juan Chi
I stand here, and gaze upon
the evergreens of Mount Chingham.
They are comfort, solace, for my heart.
translated by J.P. Seaton
from Song of My Heart’s Ideals by Juan Chi
But pacing there I find my heart turns to friends and loved ones,
and all’s a sudden dark again.
So I send these poems by the eastward-singing birds. . .
Purging my heart of all the words
that could give form to sadness.
translated by J.P. Seaton
Grass on the Ancient Plain by Po Chu-i
So tender, so tender, the grasses on the plain,
in one year, to wither, then flourish.
Wildfire cannot burn them away.
Spring breezes’ breath, they spring again,
their distant fragrance on the ancient way,
their sunlit emerald greens the ruined walls.
Seeing you off again, dear friend,
sighing, sighing, full of parting’s pain.
translated by J.P. Seaton
“The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.”
from “You cannot hold it. . .” by Ou-yang Hsiu
Nurture the tender blossoms there, don’t wait.
No flowers to be plucked
from empty bough.
translated by J.P. Seaton
Leonard Durso 