"In that book which is my memory,
On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,
Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’."
"… and between us every elegy, all the fallen
language that couldn’t hold its own
and wouldn’t give it back, had no flesh
except how long dust keeps our alphabets.”
-Brian Teare, from “Eden Tiresias"
"Don’t worry, Renée, I won’t commit suicide and I won’t burn a thing.
Because from now on, for you, I’ll be searching for those moments of always within a never.
Beauty, in this world."
"Tell me what’s the difference
between hope and waiting
because my heart doesn’t know
It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting
It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope"
"If you must quote me, remember
I said that love heals from inside.”
-Yusef Komunyakaa, from “Corrigenda” in “Neon Vernacular"
"I had love once in the palm of my hand.
See the lines there.”
John Wieners, from “A Poem for Painters"
"When I am dead, even then,
I will still love you, I will wait in these poems,
When I am dead, even then
I am still listening to you.
I will still be making poems for you
out of silence;
silence will be falling into that silence,
it is building music.”
Muriel Rukeyser, “Then"
"You want those words, you who still believe,
who think the exact words are essential
to your salvation or whatever
it is you pray for?”
-Philip Levine, from “Words on the Wind"
"My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely.”
-Anne Sexton, from “The Truth the Dead Know"
"Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
-Louise Glück, from “Cottonmouth Country"
