one way to spring

"element bearable to no mortal"

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal...

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,

slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,

icily free above the stones,

above the stones and then the world.

If you should dip your hand in,

your wrist would ache immediately,

your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn

as if the water were a transmutation of fire

that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,

then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.   

from "At The Fishhouses" by Elizabeth Bishop

whiteness can be best desribed by greyness

and yet whiteness
can be best described by greyness
a bird by a stone
sunflowers
in december...

the most palpable
description of bread
is that of hunger....

a transparent
source-like description
of water
is that of thirst
of ash
of desert...
lack hunger
absence
of flesh
is a description of love...

from "A Sketch for a Modern Love Poem" by Tadeusz Różewicz
translated by Czeslaw Milosz

warped time

Anne Akiko Meyers performs Somei Satoh's Birds In Warped Time

stillness, full, complete

If only once there were utter quiet.

If the random and approximate

fell silent and the neighbors' laughter,

if the murmur that my senses make

didn't hinder me so much when I am awake ---

Then I could in thousandfold thoughts
up to your border think you

and possess you (only for the length of a smile),

in order to give you away to all that are living

like gratitude.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours
translated by James Owens

the future of otters