"The State Of The World Calls Out For Poetry" - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Chicago, IL
Joined April 2020
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From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.
Sara Teasdale, ‘Refuge’
Photo: Millennium Park, Chicago. 2026
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People who have never had a broken heart
will never understand dead roses,
Tolstoy,
airport lounges,
Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor,
neat brandy,
the moon
and drizzle.
- Wendy Harmer
Photo: Michigan Avenue, Chicago. 2025
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This world
A fading
Mountain echo
Void and
Unreal
Within
A light snow
Three Thousand Realms
Within those realms
Light snow falls
As the snow
Engulfs my hut
At dusk
My heart, too
Is completely consumed
- Taigu Ryokan
Photo: Millennium Park, Chicago. 2025
I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing.
― David Whyte
Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. 2025
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Oh, not to be separated,
shut off from the starry dimensions
by so thin a wall.
What is within us
if not intensified sky
traversed with birds
and deep
with winds of homecoming?
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Photo: Pilsen, Chicago. 2025
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The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest.
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.
— William Blake
Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. 2025
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The hand in shadow turned the hourglass,
And the negligible bit of sand which slides
And is silent, is the only thing now heard,
And, being heard, doesn't vanish in the dark.
- Giuseppe Ungaretti
Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. 2025
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And we go on and on,
Neither sleeping nor awake,
Towards the meeting, unaware
That we are already there.
- Gabriela Mistral
Photo: State Street, Chicago. 2025
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The fires of night
through distance dance
ghosts who still know how to sing
― Tamara Rendell, ‘Mystical Tides’
Photo: South Michigan Avenue, Chicago. 2025
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The hand in shadow turned the hourglass,
And the negligible bit of sand which slides
And is silent, is the only thing now heard,
And, being heard, doesn't vanish in the dark.
- Giuseppe Ungaretti
Photo: Grand Boulevard, Chicago. 2025
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All night I hear the voice
of someone seeking me.
All night you abandon me
slowly . . .
All night I write luminous messages,
messages of rain, all night
some-one checks for me
and I check for someone.
— Alejandra Pizarnik
Photo: Wabash Avenue, Chicago. 2025
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“Who woke me up?" said Lazarus.
"I dreamed that I was dead."
He stopped and pulled the covers up
Clean above his head. "Who woke me up?" said Lazarus,
Within the ruined room.
"Who?" asked the hoot-owl,
"Who?" the empty tomb.
- Elder Olson
Photo: Wicker Park, Chicago. 2022
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We are captives,
even if our wheat grows over the fences
and swallows rise from our broken chains.
We are captives of what we love,
what we desire,
and what we are.
— Mahmoud Darwish
Photo: Argyle Street, Chicago. February 2025
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As we walk through the secretive doors
of our remembrance,
looking for forgotten benchmarks
of our history,
we can find unexpected escape hatches
opening into valuable answers
to great expectations.
— Erik Pevernagie
Photo: Nichols Bridgeway, Chicago. 2024
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To be human
is to be broken and
broken is its own
kind of beautiful.
— Robert M. Drake
Photo: Chicago. 2025
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Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
- William Shakespeare, ‘Sonnet 65’
Photo: Old Town, Chicago. February 2025
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Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood . . .
Everything is new and old in the surrounding luster . . .
— Pablo Neruda
Photo: Argyle Street, Chicago. February 2025
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Something subtle and profound happens
when you turn and look back
at the road you have traveled.
The road where you left no footprints,
where all of life was left behind.
- Dulce María Loynaz
Photo: Eureka, Illinois. February 2025
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In this primordial quiet,
every sound is an awakening that
soothes and invites one to
savour the hidden magic
of a new beginning.
— David Passarelli
Photo: Belmont Harbor, Chicago. February 2025
