"It was everywhere, in the streets and houses,
on farms and now in the air itself.
It had come from history, and we were history,
so it had come from us.
I told my artist friends who courted it
not to suffer on purpose, not to fall in love
with sadness because it would naturally be theirs—
without assistance.”
-Stephen Dunn, from “Sorrow"
"You must grieve for this right now - you have to feel this sorrow now - for the world must be loved this much if you’re going to say “I lived”…”
-Nâzım Hikmet, “On Living"
"no beauty’s loud enough
to drown out rage and drown out sorrow.”
-Melissa Stein, “Galileo"
"as dusk pretties our faces
and laughter sounds
like the first idea of glass
how many years ago, when a human,
not a god, looked at water and thought
it needed to be held, lifted, in a room
that was not its source, in a life
with just the right amount of sorrow.”
-Bob Hicok, from “a space made of words"
