At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave —
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.
Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,
die sich über die Dinge ziehn.
Ich werde den letzen vielleicht nicht vollbringen,
aber versuchen will ich ihn.
Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;
und ich weiss noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm
oder ein grosser Gesang.
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening; the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
[Verse 2]
I move with the trees in the breeze
I know that time is elastic
And I know when I go
All my particles disband and disperse
And I'll be back in the pulse
And I know none of this will matter in the long run
But I know a sound is still a sound around no one
And while I'm in this body
I want somebody to want
And I want what I want and I want
[Chorus]
You to love me
You
3
I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything,
couldn't do it anyway.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Love has never been a popular movement... The world is held together - really it is held together - by the love and the passion of a very few people.
Mein Leben ist nicht diese steile Stunde,
darin du mich so eilen siehst.
Ich bin ein Baum vor meinem Hintergrunde,
ich bin nur einer meiner vielen Munde
und jener, welcher sich am frühsten schließt.
Ich bin die Ruhe zwischen zweien Tönen,
die sich nur schlecht aneinander gewöhnen:
denn der Ton Tod will sich erhöhn -
Aber im dunklen Intervall versöhnen
sich beide zitternd.
Und das Lied bleibt schön.
24
You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.
I was no longer needing to be special, because I was no longer so caught in my puny separateness that had to keep proving I was something, I was part of the universe, like a tree is, or like grass is, or like water is.
蔵焼けて
さはるものなき
月見哉
Since my house burned down, I now own a better view of the rising moon.
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird
When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf
The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.
A difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one.
Joy is simply easier to carry
than sorrow. And your heart
could lift a city from how long
you've spent holding what's been
nearly impossible to hold.
This world needs those
who know how to do that.
Those who could find a tunnel
that has no light at the end of it,
and hold it up like a telescope
to know the darkness
also contains truths that could
bring the light to its knees.
Grief astronomer, adjust the lens,
look close, tell us what you see.
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are no wise, and not very often are we kind. And so much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
물이 흘러가는 대로 흘러가
Flow along the way the water flows
저기 끝은 뭐가 있을지도
Maybe there’s something at the end
특별한 삶 평범한 삶 그 나름대로
A special life, an ordinary life, each of them on their own
좋은 게 좋은 거지 뭐
It’s all good
좋은 게 좋은 거지
It’s all good
뜻대로만 되지 않지
It doesn’t always go as planned
불편은 다들 감수하지
Everyone puts up with the inconvenience
극적인 상황들의 반복은 삶을 지치게도 해
The repetition of dramatic situations sometimes makes life tiring
사람들이 그런거지
People are like that
없으면 있고 싶기도 있으면 없고 싶기도
When it’s not there, you wish it was, when it’s there, you wish it wasn't
누가 사람이 지혜의 동물이라 했나
Who said that humans are the animals of wisdom
내가 보기에는 후회의 동물이 분명한데
To my eyes, it’s obvious that they are the animals of regret
사람들은 변하지 너도 변했듯이
People change — like you have
세상살이 영원한 건 없어
Living a life in the world, there’s nothing that lasts forever
다 지나가는 해프닝
Everything is just a happening that passes by
너의 평범함은 되려 나의 특별함
Your being ordinary is rather my being special
너의 특별함은 되려 나의 평범함
Your being special is rather my being ordinary
나의 평범함은 되려 너의 특별함
My being ordinary is rather your being special
나의 특별함은 되려 너의 평범함
My being special is rather your being ordinary
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn't matter,
the hills weren't going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit.
Things!
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own
nothing - the reason they can fly.
"I don't have one piece of my brain for romantic love and one for narcotic love and one for family and one for art. It all washes together."
all these versions of me pouring through, getting all they needed, me a version of them, same but separate, I had just enough, coins cobbled together, little carton of orange from the fridge, joined the queue of version of me, it was like I was them, for a moment, I paid for the drink, head for the door, onto the forecourt, it was like I was them, for a moment, they peeled off left, I went right, they were versions of me again, not me.
Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art.