no one is ever holy without suffering | iris virga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
useofsorrow) wrote2019-08-27 09:31 pm
useofsorrow) wrote2019-08-27 09:31 pm
Entry tags:
( poetry and quotes )
Everything said continue
or die, your choice. And that was the grief
that dazzled: knowing there are things
that should destroy us that don’t destroy us.
—Carrie Fountain, closing lines to “Jornada del Muerto" in Burn Lake (Penguin Books, 2010)
- - -
But sadness is also beautiful, maybe because it rings so true and goes so deep, because it is about the distances in our lives, the things we lose, the abyss between what the lover and the beloved want and imagine and understand that may widen to become unbridgeable at any moment, the distance between the hope at the outset and the eventual outcome, the journeys we have to travel, including the last one out of being and on past becoming into the unimaginable: the moth flown into the pure dark. Or the flame.
—Rebecca Solnit, from The Faraway Nearby (Viking, 2013)
- - -
How can I know you love me
unless I see you grieve over me?
—Louise Glück, from “Departure” in Meadowlands (Ecco, 1997)
- - -
That place with its stillness,
whose inward keep
is our dark
privilege. The love you feel for what you’ve lost.
—Joanna Klink, from “Stillways,” Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin Books, 2015)
- - -
We are like a religion.
We, the tired ones. We,
the middle of the night ones.
We, the howl at the moon ones.
We, the aching.
Our bodies are like prayers,
like a pair of hands held out,
waiting for the rain
to come and fill them.
We, these burned bridges.
We, these altars.
If God is gone, then we are our own
churches.
We, the abandoned. We,
the holy, arching like
the gates of heaven, finding
forgiveness where we used
to find nothing.
If God is gone, then maybe he
has hidden the light inside of us.
We, the hallelujahs.
We, the amens and the
amends.
We, the dirges.
We, the absolutions.
—Caitlyn Siehl, "We"
- - -
No one is ever holy without suffering.
—Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited
- - -
The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.
—Ernest Hemingway, from A Farewell to Arms (Arrow Books, 2004, first published 1929)
or die, your choice. And that was the grief
that dazzled: knowing there are things
that should destroy us that don’t destroy us.
—Carrie Fountain, closing lines to “Jornada del Muerto" in Burn Lake (Penguin Books, 2010)
- - -
But sadness is also beautiful, maybe because it rings so true and goes so deep, because it is about the distances in our lives, the things we lose, the abyss between what the lover and the beloved want and imagine and understand that may widen to become unbridgeable at any moment, the distance between the hope at the outset and the eventual outcome, the journeys we have to travel, including the last one out of being and on past becoming into the unimaginable: the moth flown into the pure dark. Or the flame.
—Rebecca Solnit, from The Faraway Nearby (Viking, 2013)
- - -
How can I know you love me
unless I see you grieve over me?
—Louise Glück, from “Departure” in Meadowlands (Ecco, 1997)
- - -
That place with its stillness,
whose inward keep
is our dark
privilege. The love you feel for what you’ve lost.
—Joanna Klink, from “Stillways,” Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin Books, 2015)
- - -
We are like a religion.
We, the tired ones. We,
the middle of the night ones.
We, the howl at the moon ones.
We, the aching.
Our bodies are like prayers,
like a pair of hands held out,
waiting for the rain
to come and fill them.
We, these burned bridges.
We, these altars.
If God is gone, then we are our own
churches.
We, the abandoned. We,
the holy, arching like
the gates of heaven, finding
forgiveness where we used
to find nothing.
If God is gone, then maybe he
has hidden the light inside of us.
We, the hallelujahs.
We, the amens and the
amends.
We, the dirges.
We, the absolutions.
—Caitlyn Siehl, "We"
- - -
No one is ever holy without suffering.
—Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited
- - -
The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.
—Ernest Hemingway, from A Farewell to Arms (Arrow Books, 2004, first published 1929)