i want
sometimes, you just want something so hard you have to lie about it, so you can hold it in your mouth for a minute
most days i want to live
to experience
how real hunger has a real taste
most days the garden‘s almost enough.
your vulnerability
little pink flowers
on the sage, even though
the man said we couldnt‘t eat it. not this kind.
and i said,
then, gosh, what‘s the point?
not all days. but most days i do
but
i don‘t want
to be vulnerable
in a field i am the absence of field.
this is always the case.
wherever i am
i am what is missing
do you love me enough that i may be
vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me
weak
with you? do you love me
i‘m drawn
stripped of everything
to your vulnerability but
that might be lost, for only
the things i will
have
repelled by mine
for ever?
Dancing Greatly, Brené Brown | 《山河令》 Word of Honor (2021) | Lies About Sea Creatures, Ada Limón | Most Days I Want To Live, Gabrielle Calvocoressi | Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand | Essays In Love, Alain de Botton
companion piece to this
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Eating Poetry
by Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs bum like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
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Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand
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— The Next Time, by Mark Strand
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Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry"
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Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.
Mark Strand, from The Coming of Light
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lines for winter by Mark Strand
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Niente ti dirà
dove sei.
Ogni attimo é un posto
dove non sei mai stato.
Mark Strand
____Mario Giacomelli
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Mark Strand, Eating Poetry
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— Mark Strand, Keeping Things Whole
[text ID: In a field / I am the absence / of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing. / When I walk / I part the air / and always / the air moves in / to fill the spaces / where my body’s been. / We all have reasons / for moving. / I move / to keep things whole.]
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My Name
by Mark Strand
One night when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become -- and where I would find myself --
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.
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the night passes
with its silent cargo
of moons and stars
-Mark Strand, from “The Monument,” Collected Poems (Knopf, 2014)
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When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Mark Strand.
Art: Paris, 2018 by Evgeny Lushpin
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— The Next Time, by Mark Strand
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