Roshni Cavallin > Roshni's Quotes

“Don’t I remember those rustic evenings, now
buried under a thick shawl of futile memories
when you and I, walked and talked
and melted into the lurid nightfall?
I do.”
― Abhijit Sarmah, The Voice Under Silence: Poems

“My town of clouds and river
Of terrifying minds and young dreams
Streets with some people
Good people smiling
Train tracks of dreamers,
High, happy, celebrating—
Us, themselves and the beauty.”
― Abhijit Sarmah, The Voice Under Silence: Poems

“So old were you, Grammpa—
the last time I saw you, anaemic
You looked like the monsoon in my town.”
― Abhijit Sarmah, The Voice Under Silence: Poems

“i reach the perfect cube, and wait for
somebody to pick the phone back at home.”
― Abhijit Sarmah, The Voice Under Silence: Poems

“It ends. Good things
always end terribly,
at dawn in his arms
wrapped, silently
or— late in the night
in unchartered apartments
or hotel foyers, over a
fight. It ends. Good things
always end terribly.”
― Abhijit Sarmah, The Voice Under Silence: Poems

“The purpose of poetry is not to provide a solution or, say, to stop a war or prevent millions of people from dying, etc. Poetry can never do that. Poetry is all about keeping the dialogue alive. Poetry must bring forth, time and again, issues that need attention and are intentionally or unintentionally forgotten.”
― Abhijit Sarmah

“A withering gem at the heart
Of a dying river
—Majuli”
― Abhijit Sarmah

“I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. There's how I stand in the lawn, that's one way. There's also how I stand in the field across from the street, that's another way because I'm farther from people and therefore more likely to be alone. There's how I don't answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I'm not home when people knock. There's daytime silent where I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things. There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there's the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore. That's how this machine works.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“If we could light up the room with pain,
we’d be such a glorious fire.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles
and ghosts of men, and spirits
behind those birds of flame.

I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.”
― Ada Limon

“There are so many people who’ve come before us,
arrows and wagon wheels, obsidian tools, buffalo.
Look out at the meadow, you can almost see them,
generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay.
I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour.”
― Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things

“I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“People have done this before, but not us.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“Here it is:
the new way of living with the world

inside of us so we cannot lose it,
and we cannot be lost.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.”
― Ada Limon

“I'm thirty-five and remember all that I've done wrong.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“What I didn't like was how people talked to me
now that I was no longer single; they were nicer.

Men who never looked at me would start up a conversation,
like I was suddenly some safer form of fire.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“Here is my sacrifice: my hummingbird landing in a stranger’s palm.”
― Ada Limon

“I swear, I’ll try harder not to miss as much: the tree, or how your fingers under still sleep-stunned sheets coaxed all my colors back.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things: Poems

“I denied it,
this new land. But love, I’ll concede this:
whatever state you are, I’ll be that state’s bird,
the loud, obvious blur of song people point to
when they wonder where it is you’ve gone.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things