Why does one say that the heart sings? when it is not the heart, but the voice that does: if the leg could sing, it might; if the pump lodged in the chest could sing, it would make such clear deep sounds, as only that cellist makes, playing Bach, the man of the brook, whose…
Across an alley, opposite exactly my window: Intensive Care Unit. At night I’ll sit in my dark and stare into its greenly lit lucidity: I can almost read the X-rays hung on the wall — two bad ghost pears, the lungs . . . Plasma bottles glister, beep-machines, a blur of women and men in…
Men who do not wear watches know The sad infusion a concave glass Withholds. A life readies For forgetfulness its forward distances, But these wheels return their moment In the thrash of sex. When afterwards You ask what time it is, I cannot forswear How near we are to that far country Where the sun…
We counted the epochs with venerable names, with dry thorns, with dry asphodel — Justinian, Mavrikios, the Androniki Kommini Paleologi, Mr. Manouil with his long worry beads made of thick amber — “Renowned city” they called it; “the cloud-topped stronghold of all that is Greek”; and the three reservoirs opposite the illustrious Sea of Myrtoo…
We only want to count you, boys, to find out who and where you are. We don’t need a draft. We do need to know where we can find you, just for the files. I wouldn’t worry, it would be a lottery, and you are lucky. You might as well go down and sign up…
She turned into the drawing-room for privacy, but Henry and Eleanor had likewise retreated thither, and were at that moment deep in consultation about her. She drew back, trying to beg their pardon, but was, with gentle violence, forced to return . . . —Northanger Abbey When Henry and his sister Eleanor brought Miss Morland…
Love is the hardest rock and the fragile, brine-drenched ships, love is the other ship of rock, the untraveled, yet thousand-times traveled ship on the highest seas — oh the chafing of patience — with love I fashioned death, with love also my work; I went down — he said — to the town market,…
They are everywhere in the wild lights past the hammering of the dawn, the colors shooting off those sounds, and she can talk to them, she says, “communicate” in the same way distant cousins lean over corpses and say something appropriate but inaccurate. Stars cinder where the jungle ends, at the furthest outskirt of the…
Mr. Larkin’s picture is on the back. Lowell poses on the front of the jacket. Mr. Larkin’s glasses distort his eyes. Lowell doesn’t seem to be wearing his. Mr. Larkin is rather nicely dressed. Lowell’s collar is open, showing chest hair. Mr. Larkin, trying quite hard to smile, asks us, “Did you like my poems…
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