A Thousand Mountains, No Sign Of Birds In Flight; Ten Thousand Paths, No Trace Of Human Tracks. In A

“千山鳥飛絕，萬徑人蹤滅。 孤舟蓑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪。 A thousand mountains, no sign of birds in flight; Ten thousand paths, no trace of human tracks. In a lone boat, an old man, in rain hat and straw raincoat, Fishing alone, in the cold river snow.”

—

River Snow (江雪) by Liu Zongyuan (柳宗元). Tang Dynasty. 

Liu Zongyuan is a prominent Chinese poet and writer who lived during the Tang Dynasty. He is recognized for his prose writing as one of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song (唐宋八大家). Along with writer Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan was a founder of the Classical Prose Movement, in which he advocated for a clear and precise writing style. 

Liu Zongyuan was sent into exile during his civil service career, during which he was able to focus on growing his writing. It was then, in Yongzhou, that he wrote River Snow. The poem paints a scene of winter, as well as themes of isolation and perseverance. When read in Middle Chinese, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. 

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Anne Carson, ‘Wildly Constant’, London Review of Books

I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes.

— Callista Buchen, from “Taking Care,” published in Thrush

eroticasa2:

“In her sweetness where she folds my wounds there is a flower that bees cannot afford. It is too rich for them and would change their wings into operas and all their honey into the lonesome maps of a nonexistent California county. When she has finished folding all my wounds she puts them away in a dresser where the drawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle. Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that her affections always be constant to my questions.”

Richard Brautigan, “In Her Sweetness Where She Folds My Wounds,” Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt (Delacorte Press, 1979) 

“As with nature, there is something about love that remains ineffable, that stands outside or above language. This is so often where we—poets, lovers—fail–we use too many words, or too few words, or words that we think will tell someone how we feel but are ultimately unsuccessful. In love poetry, as in nature poetry, the challenge is double: even if we could see the other, how could we successfully communicate that experience? Poets are constantly gesturing towards the ineffable, arranging our words so that they make or represent something beyond human language. I often think of poetry as a medium between written language and music; it can communicate both literal linguistic meaning and something that is above that meaning, the way instrumental music communicates without accessing the means of spoken language. I see the potential in poetry to express the ineffable, as does [poet, Don] McKay: ‘Poetry comes about because language is not able to represent raw experience, yet it must.’”

— Annick MacAskill, from “To Say, To Kiss, To See: Notes on Love Poetry,” Arc Poetry Magazine (no. 88, Spring 2019)

finita–la–commedia:

“When he embraced her, He spurned the rest of the world. And he was satisfied with this small place — in her arms.”

— Hassan Najmi, from “A Small Place,” The Blueness of the Evening. Selected Poems by Hassan Najmi, trans. from the Arabic by Mbarek Sryfi and Eric Sellin (University of Arkansas Press, 2018)