June nights! Seventeen!—Drink it in.
Sap is champagne, it goes to your head. . .
—No one’s serious at seventeen
When lindens line the promenade.
Arthur Rimbaud
In the sun, while there, below, over the bay
Only clouds of white mist wander, fleeting,
And the range of hills is grayish on the blue,
Apricots, the whole tree full of them, in the dark leaves,
Glimmer, yellow and red, bringing to mind
The garden of Hesperides and apples of Paradise.
I reach for a fruit and suddenly feel the presence
And put aside the basket and say: “It’s a pity
That you died and cannot see these apricots,
While I celebrate this undeserved life.”
COMMENTARY
Alas, I did not say what I should have.
I submitted fog and chaos to a distillation.
That other kingdom of being or non-being
Is always with me and makes itself heard
With thousands of calls, screams, complaints,
And she, the one to whom I turned,
Is perhaps a leader of a chorus.
What happens only once does not stay in words.
Countries disappeared and towns and circumstances.
Nobody will be able to see her face.
And form itself is always a betrayal.
Czesław Miłosz
M’amour, m’amour
what do I love and
where are you?
That I lost my center
fighting the world
The Dreams clash
and are shattered-
and that I tried to make a paradiso
terrestre.
I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise
Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.
Ezra Pound
The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.
Jack Kerouac
In that hinternation
that stretches westward from Mahattan
autumn finds the people restless
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire. He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form; if it has none, he gives it none. A language must be found…of the soul, for the soul and will include everything: perfumes, sounds colors, thought grappling with thought.
Arthur Rimbaud
the wandering bird, after long searching for a place to alight, falls with weary wings into the sea.
Ovid
COPYRIGHT © 2024 WILL RITTER
WCR45@CORNELL.EDU