MAR 2021
anna akhamatova’s words to clarence brown: “only that which we give is truly ours.” mirroring hannah arendt’s words in the origins of totalitarianism: “. . . for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.”
“the state of emergency is also always a state of emergence. at this moment, from whence came the spirit, I don’t know. I resolved to fight.”
thinking about the great many number of times i have felt the sameness of these rohan chhetri lines drum through me: “but always / that serious joy in the drunken body / stammering home in the dark.”
listening to arcade fire’s the suburbs again after a long time and wondering about the the person who was (and perhaps still is) my young self
“One day I told her about
evolution—how in the beginning people didn’t have selves as we
have selves, there were arms heads torsos what have you roaming
about by the breakers of the shore of life, ankles unattached, eyes
needing brows, until at last what made the parts come together as
whole creatures was Love”
feeling kenneth rexroth’s mad and plentiful language roll around on my tongue as if enchanted, as if enchanted like marbles rolled forth to strike some centre by some careless god
“ so he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy
This is mortality,
this is eternity.”
the startling manifolds of colour in their impossible, insufficient, wondrous linguistic manifestations
embalming the words of past resisting woman with the conviction by which I live my own life
rilke’s ninth elegy
“I hear her voice in the morning hour. . .”
galway kinney and his invocations and insistences of physicality in poems, which, after all, path us towards the abstract conjectures like eternity
gathering the objects of a life in boxes, protecting them from the loss that only happens to people
a conveyance with the books before saying goodbye to them for a little while
somewhere in kyoto, the sweet young waiter and his soft way of speaking
a photographer’s bar in nakagyo with books, prints, and carbons piled skyward, us sitting in the middle of it as if having known one another for a long time
the lunar chandelier
reciting kistner at 2-5-1 higashiyama, one last time
how love manifests around the communal diner table, in messages sent with script and colours and tastes
sitting by meguro river with fatim during an especially ephemeral cherry blossom season, all the weight of what’s coming resting upon it
long, inordinately warm nights
“yet her feet remain beautiful. the reason they are beautiful is that they have touched the earth all her life.”
floral prints and the actualities of blooming juxtaposed
the last day of march and sumida river, which is the first river in tokyo that spoke to me in its intimate voice, which is a body of water that has carried me from where to whence, and thus feels fitting in these moments in which I have begun to say goodbye
