http://pauses-and-silences.tumblr.com/

mitochondria: Mayumi Terada

elvedon — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:16:22 +0000

mitochondria:

Mayumi Terada

"I am a history a memory inventing itself"

elvedon — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 05:42:23 +0000

“I am a history
a memory inventing itself”

- Octavio Paz, from East Slope (trans. Lysander Kemp)

"The suffering touched me too early, I have burned myself out, I am the bright ash without desire...."

elvedon — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 05:32:32 +0000

“The suffering touched me too early,
I have burned myself out,
I am the bright ash without desire.
Now, only the silence endures dearly,
When I am still standing in the fire.”

- Grażyna Chrostowska, written in Ravensbrück 13th April 1942 translated by Jarek Gajewski (via ophelia sings)

aseaofquotes: William Carlos Williams, Paterson

elvedon — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:25:51 +0000

aseaofquotes:

William Carlos Williams, Paterson

"My room is made partly of walls, partly of leaves, partly of music. Mornings I sit here pondering..."

elvedon — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:58:10 +0000

“My room is made
partly of walls, partly
of leaves, partly of music.
Mornings I sit here
pondering the east
until it blooms and opens.
Everyone else I know
rushes through congested dark
to cubicles of doing, squares
of white unchanging light.
I know how lucky I am

but my luck is a kind of exile,
like that of a Chinese poet far from court.
As I sit in the sepia light,
I can feel an immense
imponderable weight, a lifting wind,
a giddy vastness.

My room is a Tang scroll
and I am that small figure
leaning heavily on a staff,
surrounded
by mountains, mountains, mountains.”

- Priscilla Frake, from “Introspection” (via mitochondria)

"Fact is, silence is the perfect water: unlike rain it falls from no clouds to wash our minds, to..."

elvedon — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 05:24:45 +0000

“Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.”

- Philip Levine, from “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do” (via weissewiese)

apoetreflects: Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again....

elvedon — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 04:42:49 +0000

apoetreflects:

Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more.
And we also once. Never again. But this having been
once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
seems irrevocable.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, from Duino Elegies & The Sonnets of Orpheus (Vintage International, Bilingual Edition, 2009), edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell

"A clutch of syllables tied with white string… A humming through in sheets… I am in and out of sound."

elvedon — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:43:31 +0000

“A clutch of syllables tied with white string…
A humming through in sheets…
I am in and out of sound.”

- Danielle Vogel, Clasp (via sleepinginthesnow)

"I wrote of silences, nights, I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos"

elvedon — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:14:42 +0000

“I wrote of silences, nights, I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos”

- Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell : Alchemy of The World” (translated by A.S. Kline)

"Sleeping, turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let..."

elvedon — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:51:15 +0000

“Sleeping, turning in turn like planets
rotating in their midnight meadow:
a touch is enough to let us know
we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep”

- Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984 (via elvedon)

"The truth is why words fail. We can only reveal by outline, by circling absence. But that’s why..."

elvedon — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:44:50 +0000

“The truth is why words fail.
We can only reveal by outline,
by circling absence.
But that’s why language
can remember truth when it’s not spoken.
Words in us deafen,
that wait, even when their spell seems
wasted;
even while silence
accumulates to fate.”

- Anne Michaels, from “What the Light Teaches” (via growing-orbits)

"Maybe we exist as language and when someone dies they are unworded.” -Bob Hicok, from “So I Know"

elvedon — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 05:39:54 +0100

““Maybe we exist as language and when someone dies
they are unworded.”
-Bob Hicok, from “So I Know”

- (via ahuntersheart)

"My diaries are letters from my former self to my future self. My poems are replies to those letters."

elvedon — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 02:26:25 +0100

“My diaries are letters from my former self to my future self. My poems are replies to those letters.”

- Vera Pavlova (tr. Steven Seymour), “Heaven Is Not Verbose: A Notebook” (Poetry, April 2012)

Of the little things we find in our pockets...

juilett14 — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 05:30:00 +0000

Of the little things we find in our pockets...:

juilett14:

Of the little things we find in our pockets.
a hand woven Mexican bracelet, cloth,
blue with red inlay pattern. To that beach
in Baja California, with dinner lobsters,
the wooden dolphins, and wine slightly bitter
with the flavor of barrel.
The mattress was too hard, the frame squeaky
and for us it didn’t matter. Salt wind liberates
stiffened joints and fingers its way into your hair.
The beach, broad with coarse sands
and crescent rings of sea foam, an endless curvature
all the way to the silvery North. Our fingers
interlaced and laughed upon each others thighs.
We drew figurines and letters in the grainy sands
stuck to our sea-washed skin. I drew you a flower,
with little elongated petals, like a margarita’s.
You wrote simple equations with letters that
covered a patch of my forearm and washed
all of my heart with small waves that ran a pink
ribbon into all of the tightly capped chambers.

A hand-stitched and frayed bracelet that my daughter
rummaged from a basket of odd sorted items,
played with, and left on the sill to gather
light. Now a silver key to southern seas, trilled r’s
and time pitched back, and open, to your salted lips,
your eyes gathering for the future so many dreams.

We should have more of these odd sorted items,
for of these small stitches, we are made.

-Santiago

"… I am learning to rise above all that, learning the thin life, waking up simply to..."

growing-orbits — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:29:33 +0000

“… I am learning to rise
above all that, learning

the thin life, waking up
simply to praise
everything in this world that is
strong and beautiful.”

- Mary Oliver, from “Letter to ___________.”, in Thirst

"Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after..."

growing-orbits — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:41:50 +0000

“Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.”

- T. S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton”, in Four Quartets

L’esprit d’escalier: I don’t like to be late. So, I was too early. She’s not right, you...

juilett14 — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:08:09 +0000

L’esprit d’escalier: I don’t like to be late. So, I was too early. She’s not right, you...:

vulgivagus:

I don’t like to be late. So, I was too early. She’s not right, you know. My mother used to say I’m too hasty. I wasn’t— I am not. I knew when to run and she didn’t. I don’t like to be late. I never did. I parked the car and took my time crossing the street. I was consumed by how cold my neck was. I couldn’t feel my hair, it was running somewhere behind my ears. It was over, the song, before I heard it. I got inside and headed towards the elevator. And that’s when I thought of all the times I was there before, I never looked around. For all that goes on inside, it’s always too quiet. Quiet like a secret, white and blinding. You can’t miss it, the detachment. Everyone thinks they’ve got it bad, that their time is more valuable, that their life is more challenging. I was going to do what I’ve always done, drown my head with a something I’ve missed but I didn’t. I was cold, I looked around instead. There was a rhythm there. There was a time to their chairs. If you looked close enough you’d see it. There were rhythms there. There were tones to their foreheads. They’ve watched their mouths long enough to…

jarrodis: sicoactiva

juilett14 — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:06:00 +0000

jarrodis:

sicoactiva

weissewiese: doki doki · (Japanese) the heartbeat An extremely small space in time; a lone bird...

juilett14 — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:52:54 +0000

weissewiese:

doki doki · (Japanese) the heartbeat

An extremely small space in time; a lone bird trapped in an airport does not know how to read its way out so it waits; the sound of feet going; as one; a pendulum swings, then slows; the whole valley afloat.

from Stacey Tran, The World Encyclopedia of Ideophones

"Bless something small but infinite and quiet. There are senses make an object in their..."

elvedon — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:31:28 +0000

“

Bless
something small
but infinite
and quiet.

There are senses
make an object
in their simple
feeling for one.

”

- A Prayer, by Robert Creeley