Waxing Poetic: When We Two Parted by Lord George Gordon Byron

When We Two Parted
When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow-- It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame; I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame. They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me-- Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well-- Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell. In secret we met-- In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee?-- With silence and tears.

The Art of Reading: Woman Reading by Alexander Deineka

Waxing Poetic: Two Poems by Leonard Cohen

Song ("I almost went to bed ...") from "The Spice-Box of Earth"

 
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover

Waiting for Marianne from "Flowers for Hitler" 

 
I have lost a telephone
with your smell in it
I am living beside the radio
all the stations at once
but I pick out a Polish lullaby
I pick it out of the static
it fades I wait I keep the beat
it comes back almost alseep
Did you take the telephone
knowing I'd sniff it immoderately
maybe heat up the plastic
to get all the crumbs of your breath
and if you won't come back
how will you phone to say
you won't come back
so that I could at least argue

The Art of Reading: Woman Reading Near a Goldfish Tank by Lovis Corinth

Bookish Quotes #40

“The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den.”
~ Philip Adams

“Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn’t know you knew.” 
~ Clifton Fadiman

Waxing Poetic: You, Darkness by Rainer Maria Rilke

     Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

 You, Darkness

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

The Art of Reading: The Book Lover by Frantisek Kupka