the season of forbearance is upon us

the maddening endeavor of body and mind

from out of our throats: the world

the tender pillar of fire

"Yesterday evening, after Schubert's final piano sonata had surprisingly come to mind once again,

I simply said to myself: 'That's it.' 

It's what inexplicably remains steadfast against the worst storms, against a longing for emptiness; what definitely deserves to be loved:

the tender pillar of fire guiding you even in the desert that seemingly has neither limits, nor an end."


from Philippe Jaccottet's And, Nonetheless: Selected Prose and Poetry 1990-2009 (p. 315)

because one must begin and one must end

one must get a grasp on the situation