lovely decay

”A rose dreams of enjoying the company of bees, but none appears. The sun asks: Aren't you tired of waiting Yes, answers the rose, but if I close my petals, I will wither and die.”

“At the Moor Wanderer in the black wind; quietly the dry reeds whisper In the stillness of the moor. In the gray sky A flock of wild birds follows; Slanting over gloomy waters. Turmoil. In decayed hut The spirit of putrescence flutters with black wings. Crippled birches in the autumn wind. Evening in deserted tavern. The way home is scented all around By the soft gloom of grazing herds; Apparition of the night; toads plunge from brown waters.”

“I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.”

“First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes the collapse of humanity. Then comes dissolution of the sun. Then comes entropy.”

“Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

“Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.”

“Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

“An oppressive odor of decay now mingled with the stench of mold and seemed to clutch at the very breath in their lungs.”

“The rose has told In one simplicity That never life Relinquishes a bloom But to bestow An ancient confidence.” 

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

"It’s Christmas at Ground Zero The button has been pressed The radio just let us know That this is not a test Everywhere the atom bombs are droppin’ It’s the end of all humanity No more time for last minute shoppin’ It’s time to face your final destiny”