November 11, 2016
In
Poetry
And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To Find in the left one
Its consolation.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali
October 1, 2016
In
Poetry
Memory is not enough…
I do not recollect. What I am
is alive in me because of you. I do not reinvent you
at sadly cooled-off places you have left behind.
Even your absence is filled
with your warmth and is more real
than your not-existing. Longing often meanders
into vagueness. Why should I throw myself away
when something in you may be
touching me, very lightly, like moonlight
on a window seat.
(To Lou Andreas-Salomé, Duino, late autumn, 1911)
September 1, 2016
In
Poetry
STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me,
why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you
– Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.