(no subject)

[beauty--deleted.livejournal.com]

How to remove oneself from oneself
[ without unknowing oneself totally ]:
open the empty receptacles,
consign our mobility there,
the free air, the green wind,
and not leave for the rest
only an option of shadows,
a chance glance in an elevator,
a picture gone dead in the eyes?

Some protocol must be found
for establishing absence
with nothing really established
-- some allowance for the curious among
us who feel the great gust in their faces
when the oratorical sound is uncovered,
and find, just under their boot-soles,
the absent one blazing back at them.

Dying - Pablo Neruda

(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Post Card

(Sent to Andre Rouveyre, 20 August 1915)

I write to you beneath this tent
While summer day becomes a shade
And startling magnificent
Flowers of the cannonade
Stud the pale blue firmament
And before existing fade

Apollinaire, Guillaume.

(no subject)

[penguinboy.livejournal.com]

"The Blind Leading The Blind"
by Lisel Mueller

Take my hand. There are two of us in this cave.
The sound you hear is water; you will hear it forever.
The ground you walk on is rock. I have been here before.
People come here to be born, to discover, to kiss,
to dream, and to dig and to kill. Watch for the mud.
Summer blows in with scent of horses and roses;
fall with the sound of sound breaking; winter shoves
its empty sleeve down the dark of your throat.
You will learn toads from diamonds, the fist from the palm,
love from the sweat of love, falling from flying.
There are a thousand turnoffs. I have been here before.
Once I fell off a precipice. Once I found gold.
Once I stumbled on murder, the thin parts of a girl.
Walk on, keep walking, there are axes above us.
Watch for occasional bits and bubbles of light—
birthdays for you, recognitions: yourself, another.
Watch for the mud. Listen for bells, for beggars.
Something with wings went crazy against my chest once.
There are two of us here. Touch me.