Unfathomable Cities

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

-Rilke

Image: Irene Suchocki

Words Hazard All

              I’ve never thought of counting words. I’d rather not

              know.
-Iris Murdoch

      Title: Ronald Johnson

Not Waving but Drowning

Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
Image: Arthur Siegel, Study of Negative/Positive Profiles, c.1937
Title: Stevie Smith

Something ineffable about the past

  Above all...I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.
   -Anselm Kiefer
 
Image: Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Box of Visions, 1938
Title: Susan Sontag

We live submerged

    Words carry oceans on their small backs.
 
    -Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water
 
Image: Graciela Iturbide, Eyes to Fly With?, Coyoacan, Mexico, 1991
Title: Evangelista Torricelli