trying + learning | Managing Editor at Five Points | give me that good rejection letter
- Tweets449
- Following219
- Followers63
- Likes1.9K
ALT TRANSFORMATION I haven't written a single poem in months. I've lived humbly, reading the paper, pondering the riddle of power and the reasons for obedience. I've watched sunsets (crimson, anxious), I've heard the birds grow quiet and night's muteness. I've seen sunflowers dangling their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman had gone strolling through the gardens. September's sweet dust gathered on the windowsill and lizards hid in the bends of walls. I've taken long walks, craving one thing only: lightning, transformation, you.
ALT Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. —Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell
