Orbis Non Sufficit

“It’s the fourteenth of August, and I’m too hot To endure food, or bed. Steam and fear of scorpions Keep me awake. I’m told the heat won’t fade with Autumn. Swarms of flies arrive. I’m roped into my clothes. In another moment I’ll scream down the office As the paper mountains rise higher on my desk. O those real mountains to the south of here! I gaze at the ravines kept cool by pines. If I could walk on ice, with my feet bare!”

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open”

“How privileged you are, to be still passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. (…) Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.”

“if there is a light then i am going to swallow it. if there is a god then i’m going to make him cry.”

“Here is the joy, here is the grief, here is the slaughter I have shaped into stars.”

“I need a drink I need something worthless I need love that isn’t contingent upon some kind of loss”

“In what do you believe?In September’s slight motion of particulars, in the weight of birds, in lust, propulsion, maps that lie.”

I can feel in unspeakable colors and sulk with the great artists But talking is another country

“Autumn approaches and the heart begins to dream–”

i killed a plant once because i gave it too much water. lord, i worry that love is violence.

“It is fatal, this August—its heat climbs all the stairs of night, it doesn’t let me sleep.”

“you either love the world or you live in it all my poems are wild birds pecking eyeholes in the windows of hotels”

“Nothing sung under the cover of night has ever been cute. That star is probably dead by now. That road is probably much too far to walk. Fumble around in the dark. Pick up your teeth. It’s much too late to fall in love and I’m here trying to lie awake in peace. Go sigh somewhere else.”

“What am I ready to lose in this advancing summer?”

“I am desperately looking the other way so that love won’t see me.”

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

“…the balm of sun and idle August afternoons…”