- "To-morrow for the young, the poets exploding like bombs,/The walks by the lake, the winter of perfect communion;/To-morrow the bicycle races/Through the suburbs on summer evenings: but to-day the struggle./Today the inevitable increase in the chances of death;/The conscious acceptance of guilt in the fact of murder;/To-day the expending of powers/On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting./To-day the makeshift consolations; the shared cigarette;/The cards in the candle-lit barn and the scraping concert,/The masculine jokes; to-day the/Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting." -- W. H. Auden
- "The words won't change again. Sad friend, you cannot change." -- Elizabeth Bishop, "North Haven"
- "I like the way you both look out at me./Somehow it's sometimes hard to be a human./Arms and legs get often in the way,/making oneself a bulky, awkward burden." -- Robert Creeley, "En Famille"
- "Is wisdom just an empty word?/Is age a time one might finally well have missed? Must humanness be its own reward? Is happiness this?" -- Same
- "If this is true, your memory is a mothership/minus the disco-sadistic silver/all stars need to shine. Tell the world." -- Thomas Sayers Ellis, "T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M."
- "He longs to be/An orange, to feel fingernails/Run a seam through him." -- Yusef Komunyakaa, "Seven Deadly Sins"
- "I'd rather love somebody/And say his name to myself every day/Until I fall apart." Angela Ball, "Jazz"
- "Our singing brings her/back. Our dying keeps her alive." -- Linda Gregg, "The Singers Change, The Music Goes On"
sep 16 2009 ∞
nov 21 2009 +