Christopher

“The Last Invocation

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!

Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“If you stand / there long enough the air will thicken / with dusk and dust and exhaust / and finally with / a starless dark. The day will become something / it's never been before, something for / which I have no name.”
― Philip Levine, The Last Shift: Poems

“But peace returns to my heart.
Not peace as it used to be
before it left me years ago. It went away to school,
matured as I did,
and came back looking like me.”
― Yehuda Amichai, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

“It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little.”
― Ellen Bass, Like a Beggar