What a luxury it is to walk into an interaction with another human being and not have to prove anything or patch anything or police yourself lest you become too honest, or deal with the other person trying to do any or all of these things.
Rafał Borcz, Dwie olchy (wersja duża) / Two alder (big version), 2012
(via iamjapanese)
he who has a hat has what? i ask. broad-brimmed, you say, a roof above one’s head, cornered, crushed, and most likely felt — so you’ll feel sheltered till a gust comes blustering by. a hut might be trustier, though some might say i’ve hidden you under my skin. how cozily we’d huddle in a heap of hides. and then part ways? be it not so! no homes without you could be haven or heaven. never shall i betake myself out, away or off. nor will i, parting, doff.
—uljana wolf, FALSE FRIENDS: A DICHTionary of false friends, true cognates, and other cousins, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
Give me an observer,
and that very moment I’ll
be perfected.
With the hue and shape of the sun
I’ll excite him
mercilessly
among my moons.
You know he could never
bear perfection
so, at his first cut,
I’ll release that fragrance
you once said
only oranges possess.
Don’t worry, only
by counting all my roe
could he be immortal.
—Maja Vidmar, trans. Anna Jelnikar & Kelly Lenox Allan
I feel lost,
my hands shake, I don’t speak,
clouds drift further to the east,
the telephone will explode in flames,
too many calls, not enough love,
I am writing poems for a New Rome,
nearby a hard rain,
the old continent underwater in the middle of summer,
like someone trying to clean sins, pain remains,
you can call me anyway, whenever you are ready,
Africa is not that far,
I only miss Asia sometimes,
I get closest to myself, when I am returning,
when I’m almost home.
—Gregor Podlogar, trans. Matthew Zapruder
(Source: ducts.org)
how sad for
those birds
—Craig Dworkin, Motes
“You can be in a state of generalized longing without knowing quite what it is that you long for. This might be the purest form of longing, the most difficult to assuage, the least susceptible to being brought to an end, the kind capable of lasting longest—so much so that it can become all but indistinguishable from a generalized condition of existence.”
On must learn not to pray. One must learn to release the sunlight and to allow a magnetic dissonance in a bird voice that enters the ear. Nothing here needs the evidence of that photon perched on the sill of the square window at the end of the room, or the symmetry of its resemblance to any silver spark of dust. I resume: such is peace, and such is the inexact profession of a pilgrim proceeding toward the point of his own erasure."
on your hips they are acting like parentheses,
which is why a great many thinkers come from Paris,
where lovers embrace on the quays and intellectuals
watch them from windows, taking notes."
