Saturday, April 21, 2007
a prison evening
Each star a rung,
night comes down the spiral
staircase of the evening.
The breeze passes by so very close
as if someone just happened to speak of love.
In the courtyard,
the trees are absorbed refugees
embroidering maps of return on the sky.
On the roof,
the moon - lovingly, generously -
is turning the stars
into a dust of sheen.
From every corner, dark-green shadows,
in ripples, come towards me.
At any moment they may break over me,
like the waves of pain each time I remember
this separation from my lover.
This thought keeps consoling me:
though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed
in rooms where lovers are destined to meet,
they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,
nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed,
no poison of torture make me bitter,
if just one evening in prison
can be so strangely sweet,
if just one moment anywhere on this earth.
-- Faiz Ahmed Faiz
from the urdu. indians, romantic buggers... of course there's always the flipside
advice to women
Keep cats
if you want to learn to cope with
the otherness of lovers.
Otherness is not always neglect --
Cats return to their litter trays
when they need to.
Don't cuss out of the window
at their enemies.
That stare of perpetual surprise
in those great green eyes
will teach you
to die alone.
-- Eunice de Souza
(also indian.)
+ fictions&fires
6:44 PM
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plangere, latin: to strike, or to lament.
in the depth of winter i finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
--albert camus
--
to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
-- ee cummings
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