From A German War Primer

Who built the seven gates of Thebes? 
The books are filled with names of kings. 
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? 
And Babylon, so many times destroyed. 
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses, 
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? 
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished 
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome 
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom 
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. 
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend 
The night the seas rushed in, 
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves. 

Young Alexander conquered India. 
He alone? 
Caesar beat the Gauls. 
Was there not even a cook in his army? 
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet 
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? 
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War. 
Who triumphed with him? 

Each page a victory 
At whose expense the victory ball? 
Every ten years a great man, 
Who paid the piper? 

So many particulars. 
So many questions.

- By Bertolt Brecht

Love After Love

E-Books

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.

- Derek Walcott

Pity the nation...

“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.”

- Kahlil Gibran, The Garden  Of The Prophet

Almost 30

'But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.'

- Julian Barnes, The Sense Of An Ending

The Inches

Sitting here, mere inches separating us
Inches that will always separate us
My atoms ache for your atoms
I keep staring at your tiny fingers
Typing away furiously, and
I'm just about ready to swallow my keyboard
I beg the universe
And you turn to me
Your voice strained
From all the coughing
You ask me for a lozenge
I want to give so much more
But for now a lozenge it is
You extend your hand and then,
Just like that, for a brief moment
The inches disappear
The candy takes my heart
and everything else with it
You turn, the inches separate us again
I'm back to sitting here
Loving you like hell.
And this sorry poem, like my love,
Does not go anywhere.

from Words For Departure

I have remembered you.
You were not the town visited once,
Nor the road falling behind running feet.

You were as awkward as flesh
And lighter than frost or ashes.

You were the rind,
And the white-juiced apple,
The song, and the words waiting for music.

*
You have learned the beginning;
Go from mine to the other.

Be together; eat, dance, despair,
Sleep, be threatened, endure.
You will know the way of that.

But at the end, be insolent;
Be absurd--strike the thing short off;
Be mad--only do not let talk
Wear the bloom from silence.

And go away without fire or lantern
Let there be some uncertainty about your departure.

--Louise Bogan

Magic

‘You, my love, are pure magic.’ he said. ‘You have brought magic in my life, accepted me and shown me how it’s done. You are my Hagrid, Albus and Hermione rolled into one.’