the great Yes and the great No

Che Fece… Il Gran Refiuto

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—
drags him down all his life.

— C.P. Cavafy (Alexandria, 1863-1933)

[translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard] 

Constantine Cavafy, “Che Fece… Il Gran Refiuto,” translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Copyright 1975 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

under your skin

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive

— Pablo Neruda, from "Ode to a Naked Beauty"

read the whole poem here

stay, I said

The Promise

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

Stay, I said
to the cut flowers.
They bowed
their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,
who fled.

Stay, leaf.
It reddened,
embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does,
obedient for a moment,
soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth
of riverine valley meadows,
of fossiled escarpments,
of limestone and sandstone.
It looked back
with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.
Each answered,
Always.

cast the emptiness

      Cast the emptiness from your arms
into the spaces we breathe: perhaps the birds
will sense the increase of air with more passionate flying.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from The First Elegy, Duino Elegies

watch, now

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...

Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.” 

― Mary Oliver

Learn to enjoy the little things —

there are so many of them.

— Anonymous

a birthday

A Birthday

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

My heart is like a singing bird
               Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
               Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
               That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
               Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
               Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
               And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
               In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
               Is come, my love is come to me.