Putri > Putri's Quotes

“If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“What Do Women Want?” Kim Addonizio I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what’s underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. I want to walk like I’m the only woman on earth and I can have my pick. I want that red dress bad. I want it to confirm your worst fears about me, to show you how little I care about you or anything except what I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment from its hanger like I’m choosing a body to carry me into this world, through the birth-cries and the love-cries too, and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin, it’ll be the goddamned dress they bury me in.”
― Diana Whitney, You Don't Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves

“Night Bloom Crystal Williams —For Jade, after Hayden It makes no sense to say things will get better because you will not understand until they are better & they may not get better soon. There is always pain in the world & you have seen so much of it. I do not know how to explain other than to say, I am so sorry your mother has died, Girl, that her mother has turned her back, that your father is a rogue & you are having to do this grown-up work alone. I would like to tell you to be patient but understand that right now you might only know fear. Listen, then. & know this: it is okay to be fearful. If you cannot believe that things will soften, trust that I believe for you. You will not remember all of this pain. But when Darkness insists you attend his party you will know the trapdoors & gloomy corners of that house. & you alone will be able to find the garden where beautiful Cereus is opening her eyes in the pitch black.”
― Diana Whitney, You Don't Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves

“Frida Kahlo, San Miguel, Ash Wednesday You faded so long ago but here in the souvenir arcade you’re everywhere: the printed cotton bags, the pierced tin boxes, the scarlet T-shirts, the beaded crosses; your coiled braids, your level stare, your body of a deer or martyr. It’s a meme you can turn into if your ending’s strange enough and ardent, and involves much pain. The rope of a hanged man brings good luck; saints dangle upside down or offer their breasts on a plate and we wear them, we invoke them, insert them between our flesh and danger. Fireworks, two streets over. Something’s burning somewhere, or did burn, once. A torn silk veil, a yellowing letter: I’m dying here. Love on a skewer, a heart in flames. We breathe you in, thin smoke, grief in the form of ashes. Yesterday the children smashed their hollowed eggs on the heads of others, baptizing them with glitter. Shell fragments litter the park like the wings of crushed butterflies, like sand, like confetti: azure, sunset, blood, your colours.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems

“5. Editorial Notes One note might be (she said) to pull back somewhat from exhortation and despair Instead (she said) try to provide an experiential under understanding of human human (she said) impact human pact then let people let people come let people come to their own conclusions. Own their conclusions. She said: There is some danger in this.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems

“The Bright Side But look on the bright side, you say. Has there ever been such brightness? Has there ever been a flower as bright that has lasted as long as this? In winter snow, after a funeral? Has there ever been a red as red, a blue as blue? And so inexpensive too! Has there ever been a bucket as light as this, to carry water into the villages? Why should we use the heavy one so easily broken? Not to mention the orange canoe. As for your voice, two thousand miles away but as clear as whistling, right in my ear— how else could it get here? Don’t tell me this is not beautiful— as beautiful as the day! Or some days. (And the beloved twistable pea-green always dependable ice-cube tray . . .)”
― Margaret Atwood