grades of red

Stravinsky in L.A. 

by Elizabeth Alexander

In white pleated trousers, peering through green
sunshades, looking for the way the sun is red
noise, how locusts hiss to replicate the sun.
What is the visual equivalent
of syncopation? Rows of seared palms wrinkle
in the heat waves through green glass. Sprinklers
tick, tick, tick. The Watts Towers aim to split
the sky into chroma, spires tiled with rubble
nothing less than aspiration. I’ve left
minarets for sun and syncopation,
sixty-seven shades of green which I have
counted, beginning: palm leaves, front and back,
luncheon pickle, bottle glass, etcetera.
One day I will comprehend the different
grades of red. On that day I will comprehend
these people, rhythms, jazz, Simon Rodia,
Watts, Los Angeles, aspiration.

search for love

Search for Love
by D.H. Lawrence 

Those that go searching for love
only make manifest their own lovelessness,
and the loveless never find love,
only the loving find love,
and they never have to seek for it.

given a chance

“There isn't enough of anything as long as we live. 

But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.”

— Raymond Carver

American pie

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are; The President is there in the White House for you--it is not you who are here for him; The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you--not you here for them; The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you; Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.  

List close, my scholars dear! All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you; All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you; The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same; If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums.

— Walt Whitman

exposed

Exposed

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Exposed upon the mountains of the heart. See how small over there
the last outpost of words, and higher up,
just as small, one last farmyard of feeling.
Do you recognize it? Exposed
upon the mountains of the heart. Stony ground
under the hands.

Something still blooms here, on the dumb cliff face
blooms an unconscious weed, singing.
But where is the conscious one? He who began to be conscious
now is silent, exposed upon the mountain of the heart …

(Written on the eve of World War I)

such stuff

In William Shakespeare's Tempest, Act IV, Prospero says,

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.

the fly

The Fly
by Lydia Davis 

At the back of the bus,
inside the bathroom,
this very small illegal passenger,
on its way to Boston.

Lydia Davis is the 2013 winner of the Man Booker International Prize for fiction. "The Fly" is one of her short stories. I'm pretty geeked that I can post entire short stories at small!