All drawings untitled 2004
While it is alive
Until Death touches it
While it and I lap one Air
Dwell in one Blood
Under one Sacrament
Show me Division can split or pare-
Love is like Life- merely longer
Love is like Death, during the Grave
Love is the Fellow of the Resurrection
Scooping up the Dust and chanting "Live"!
Emily Dickinson
All drawings untitled 2004
All the letters I can write
Are not fair as this-
Syllables of Velvet-
Sentences of Plush,
Depths of Ruby, undrained,
Hid, Lip, for Thee-
Play it were a Humming Bird-
And just sipped- me-
Emily Dickinson
All drawings untitled 2004
The difference between Despair
And Fear- is like the One
Between the instant of a Wreck-
And when the Wreck has been-
The Mind is smooth- no Motion-
Contented as the Eye
Upon the Forehead of a Bust-
That knows- it cannot see-
Emily Dickinson
All drawings untitled 2004
What I can do- I will-
Though it be as little as a Daffodil-
That I cannot- must be
Unknown to possibility-
Emily Dickinson
All drawings untitled 2004
I know lives, I could miss
Without a Misery-
Others- whose instant's wanting-
Would be Eternity-
The last- a scanty Number-
'Twould scarcely fill a Two-
The first- A Gnat's Horizon
Could easily outgrow-
Emily Dickinson
All drawings untitled 2004
Least Bee that brew-
A Honey's Weight
The Summer multiply-
Content Her smallest fraction help
The Amber Quantity-
Emily Dickinson
All drawings untitled 2004
GROWING IN SPIRIT
He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience and respect.
He'll hold to some laws
but he'll mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.
Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He won't be afraid of the destructive act:
half the house will have to come down.
This way he'll grow virtuously into wisdom.
C. P. Cavafy
All drawings untitled 2004
TO CALL UP THE SHADES
One candle is enough. Its gentle light
will be more suitable, will be more gracious
when the Shades come, the Shades of Love.
One candle is enough. Tonight the room
should not have too much light. In deep reverie,
all receptiveness, and with the gentle light-
in this deep reverie I'll form visions
to call up the Shades, the Shades of Love.
C. P. Cavafy
All drawings untitled 2004
BUT THE WISE PERCEIVE THINGS ABOUT
TO HAPPEN
'For the gods perceive things in the future, ordinary
people things in the present, but the wise perceive
things about to happen.'
Philostratos, 'Life of Apollonios of Tyana', viii, 7.
Ordinary mortals know what's happening now,
the gods know what the future holds
because they alone are totally enlightened.
Wise men are aware of future things
just about to happen.
Sometimes during moments of intense study
their hearing's troubled: the hidden sound
of things approaching reaches them,
and they listen reverently, while in the street outside
the people hear nothing whatsoever.
C. P. Cavafy
All drawings untitled 2004
COME BACK
Come back often and take hold of me,
sensation that I love, come back and take hold of me-
when the body's memory revives
and an old longing again passes through the blood,
when lips and skin remember
and hands feel as though they touch again.
Come back often, take hold of me in the night
when lips and skin remember...
C. P. Cavafy
All drawings untitled 2004
LONGINGS
Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing
old,
sadly shut away in a sumptuous mausoleum,
roses by the head, jasmine at the feet-
so appear the longings that have passed
without being satisfied, not one of them granted
a single night of pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.
C. P. Cavafy
All drawings untitled 2004
VOICES
Loved, idealized voices
of those who have died, or of those
lost for us like the dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams;
sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them.
And, with their sound, for a moment return
sounds from our life's first poetry-
like distant music fading away at night.
C. P. Cavafy
All drawings untitled 2004
THE WINDOWS
In these dark rooms where I live out empty days,
I wander round and round
trying to find the windows.
It will be a great relief when a window opens.
But the windows aren't there to be found-
or at least I can't find them. And perhaps
it's better if I don't find them.
Perhaps the light will prove another tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will expose?
C. P. Cavafy
