Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

— Sheenagh Pugh

Porta Portese

“—if it once gleamed, if it ticked, if it buzzed, if it
oiled eter­nal youth, if it whis­pered
on an old tape with the sex­ual lure of in­fi­nite
cash, if it said I am your pri­vate
cas­tle and you are a queen, if it lit a thou­sand
bulbs, if it shaved a thou­sand hairs, if
it declared God loves you, if it promised
to cure hare­lip eczema sca­bies rage,
if it clipped hang­nails, if it deliv­ered proverbs, if it hugged
the ass—it’s laid out on a col­lapsi­ble
table or a mat on as­phalt, money will change
hands, money will change us
all, change Gyp­sies pro­fes­sors Nigeri­an whores
limp­ing chil­dren drugged ba­bies
iPod­ded teens So­ma­li re­fugees artists in
drag il­le­gal Al­ba­ni­ans cruis­ing pols We said
one world We said isn’t my money good enough
for you Switch blade Switch banks The Cloa­ca
Max­i­ma ac­cepts all cur­ren­cies The Tiber
leaks yel­low between its legs ven­e­re­al
ven­er­a­ble du­ty-​free lux­u­ri­ous silken rip­pling
classi­cal waves sold and sol­dered solved re­flect­ed here—”

— Rosanna Warren

Sometimes when I see the bare arms of trees in the evening
I think of men who have died without love,
Of desolation and space between branch and branch,
I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear
And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these
branches
And the cold space between.
I think of the vastness and courage between this step and that step
Of the yearning and fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire
held apart.
I think of the ocean of longing that moves between land and land
And between people, the space and ocean.
The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of
leaves, without the sound of wind;
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
between tree and tree
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk.

— John Tagliabue

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves
birds and animals and the ants —
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you
in your mother’s womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around entirely
orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten
what you once knew,
and that’s why everything you do has some weird
failure in it.

— Kabir

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

— David Whyte