One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day.
Accept the fluster of lost door keys,
the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther,
losing faster
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.
None of these will bring disaster.

-Elizabeth Bishop

A la Memoria de Josefina

Que te ame, sin rival, tu lo supiste
y lo sabe El Senor; nunca se liga
la erratil hierba a la floresta amiga
como se unio tu ser a mi alma triste

Y en mi memoria tu vivir persiste
con el dulce rumor de una cantiga
y a la nostalgia de tu amor mitiga
mi duelo que al olvido se resiste.

Diafano manantial que no se agota,
vives en mi y en mi aridez austera
tu frescura se mezcla gota a gota.

Tu fuiste a mi desierto la palmera,
A mi pielago amargo la gaviota,
Y solo moriras cuando yo muera!

-Guillermo Valencia

metamorphosis

there was a boy standing across from me,
his face bathed in wind, his voice bathed in sky.
he daydreamed a girl living with the sea,
a face trying hard to lift wings and fly.
she tumbled deep beneath the ocean's waves,
cornflake girl at home in her cornflake world.
he stood on the shore lonely: girl's first slave,
he fell into himself; i saw him hurl.
he threw himself up: again and again
and i fell into his trembling form
praying to danae and alcyain
to help his weakened body to transform.
in three days' time he rose, weak as could be
and stumbled onwards to drown in the sea.

Kashy Stec-Neifert

i'd rather be in love (excerpts)

I cannot help it
I couldn't stop if I tried
The same old heartbeat fills the
emptiness I have inside
And I've heard you can't fight love,
so I won't complain
'Cause why would I stop the fire that
keeps me going on?

Why are we afraid to be in love?
To be in love
I can't explain it
I know it's tough to be loved
But without you I'm alone
and I'd rather be in love

Michelle Branch

over us if (as what dusk becomes
darkness) innumerably singular
strictly immeasurable nowhere flames
-its farthest silence nearer than each oour

heartbeat-believe that love (and only love)
comprehends huger easily beyonds
than timelessly alive all glories we've
agreed with nothing deeper than our minds

to call the stars. And (darling) never fear:
love, when such marvels vanish, will include
-ther by arriving magically here-
an everywhere which you've and I've agreed

and we've (with one last more than kiss) to call
most the amazing miracle of all

e. e. cummings

whatever's merely wilful,
and not miraculous
(be never it so skilful)
must wither fail and cease
but better than to grow
beauty knows no

their goal (in calm and fury:
through joy and anguish) who've
made her, outglory glory
the little while they live-
unless by your thinking
forever's long

let beauty touch a blunder
(called life) we die to breath,
itself becomes her wonder
-and wonderful is death;
but more, the older he's
the younger she's

e. e. cummings

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; wich grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

e. e. cummings

unlove's the heavenless hell and the homeless home
of knowledgeable shadows (quick to seize
each nothing which all soul-less wraiths proclaim
substance; all heartless spectress, happiness)

lovers alone wear sunlight. the whole truth
not hid by matter; not by mind revealed
(more than all dying life, all living death)
and never which has been or will be told

sings only-and all lovers are the song.
here (only here) is freedom: always here
no then of winter equals now of spring;
but april's day transcends november's year

(eternity being so sans until
(twice, have I lived forever in a smile)

e. e. cummings

stand with your lover on the ending earth-
and while a (huge by which huger than
huge) whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow, suppose we could not love, dear; imagine
ourselves like living neither nor dead these
(or many thousands hearts which don't and dream
or many million minds which sleep and move)
blind sand, at pitiless the mercy of
time time time time time
how fortunate are you and I, whose home
is timelessness: we who have wondered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day (or maybe even less)

e. e. cummings

i shall imagine life
is not worth dying, if
(and when) roses complain
their beauties are in vain
but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose, roses (you feel
certain) will only smile

e. e. cummings

let's, from some loud unworld most rightful wrong
climbing, my love (till mountains speak the truth)
enter a cloverish silence of thrush song
(and more than every miracle's to breathe)
wounded us will becauseless ultimate
earth accept and primeval whyless sky;
healing our by immeasurable day
(shrived of that nonexistence millions call life,
you and i may reverently share
the blessed eachness of all beautiful
selves wholly which and innocently are)
seeming's enough for slaves of space and time
ours is the now and here of freedom.
come

e. e. cummings

winter by spring; i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of his Presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

e. e. cummings

being to timelesssness as it's to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer? all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh [still in the process of completion...]