Image Marriages

Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce, you can’t repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once. No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses. One day, perhaps some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent. The next day, though you’re here with me, I can’t help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock? Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It’s in its nature not to stay: Today is always gone tomorrow. With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we’re different (we concur) just as two drops of water are. Wislawa Szymborska, 1

I knew it the first of the summer, I knew it the same at the end, That you and your love were plighted, But couldn’t you be my friend? Couldn’t we sit in the twilight, Couldn’t we walk on the shore With only a pleasant friendship To bind us, and nothing more? There was not a word of folly Spoken between us two, Though we lingered oft in the garden Till the roses were wet with dew. We touched on a thousand subjects – The moon and the worlds above, - And our talk was tinctured with science, And everything else, save love. A wholly Platonic friendship You said I had proven to you Could bind a man and a woman The whole long season through, With never a thought of flirting, Though both were in their youth, What would you have said, my lady, If you had known the truth! What would you have done, I wonder, Had I gone on my knees to you And told you my passionate story, There in the dusk and the dew? My burning, burdensome story, Hidden and hushed so long – My s

Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. W.S. Merwin Photo Nuraj Shrestha

Your levees break And overflow Like promises Made long ago The city stop Signs disappear Black water crests At level: FEAR Old family photos Float away With furniture and yesterday. Then come the tears Like rivulets A Mississippi Of Regrets. Peter Kostin Photo by  Marko Višacki

The good Lord sends me gifts I didn’t earn, sometimes far in excess of what I’ve sought. I give him grateful thanks, and then return to shake the wrappings as an afterthought. The more I have, the more I seem to need; I hunger, though my cupboards almost burst. Each acquisition fans a spark of greed. My cup is full to brimming; still, I thirst. When I was younger, people called me poor, yet I had all the gifts I ever wanted. Now, happiness depends on getting more expensive toys I’ll quickly take for granted. My life was richer when I did without. Let others pray for rain. God grant me drought. Carol Taylor Photo by Pratyay on Flickr

Out of a motionless infernal shudder and clang of steel on steel as wagons moved toward the eternal, a sudden silence: I was healed. The stormcloud of my sickness fled on a breath. A flickering of eyes, and I saw my mother by my bed and gazed at her without surprise. Free! Helpless, yes, to move the hands clasped on my chest—but I had no desire to move. The rustling sounds (like cypress trees, like streams that flow across vast prairies seeking seas that don’t exist) were thin, insistent: I followed after those vain sighs, ever the same, ever more distant. By Giovanni Pascoli Translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock Photo by  Juergen Huettel

Black the coniferous darkness, White the snow track between, And the moon, skull-white in its starkness, Watches upper ledges lean, And regards with the same distant stare, And equal indifference, How your breath goes white in steel air As you trudge from whither to whence. For from somewhere you rose to go, Maybe long before daylight withdrew, With the dream of a windowpane’s glow And a path trodden to invite you. And, indeed, there may be such a place, Perhaps at the next corner or swerve, Where someone presses a face To the frost-starred glass, though the curve Shows yet only mocking moonlight. But soon, but soon! –Alone, I wish you well in your night As I pass you in my own. We each hear the distant friction, Then crack of bough burdened with snow, And each takes the owl’s benediction, And each goes the way he will go. Robert Penn Warren Photo by  古 天熱

(After Georges de La Tour) A nocturne shadow deepens to frame the pensive Magdalen as she sits alone, her glinting jewels darken to common stone, her fine clothes weave a red brocade of shame. She contemplates the image of the flame in the mirror, a taller chaperone to the candle's graceful plume of light, shown twice, as if meant to enlighten and inflame. Conversion by candlelight: Mary's hands rest on a skull in her lap, its ochre stain the color of regret--to watch her choose between mirror and candle, the demands of self and truth, evokes a kindred pain in anyone who has a past to lose. Lorna Knowles Blake

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt at being told that it is a fragment awaiting perfection. Rabindranath Tagore Photo by Cassin Stacy

Just stand aside and watch yourself go by Think of yourself as “he” instead of   “I.” Note, closely as in other men you note, The bag-kneed trousers and the seedy coat. Pick flaws; find fault; forget the man is you, And strive to make your estimate ring true. Confront yourself and look you in the eye — Just stand aside and watch yourself go by. Interpret all your motives just as though You looked on one whose aims you did not know. Let undisguised contempt surge through you when You see you shirk, O commonest of men! Despise your cowardice; condemn whate’er You note of falseness in you anywhere. Defend not one defect that shames your eye — Just stand aside and watch yourself go by. And then, with eyes unveiled to what you loathe, To sins that with sweet charity you’d clothe, Back to your self-walled tenement you’ll go With tolerance for all who dwell below. The faults of others then will dwarf and shrink, Love’s chain grow stronger by

I leant upon a coppice gate       When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter’s dregs made desolate       The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky       Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh       Had sought their household fires. The land’s sharp features seemed to be       The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy,       The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth       Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth       Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among       The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong       Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,       In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul       Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings       Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things       Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through       His happy g