José

“Theatre Impressions

For me the tragedy's most important act is the sixth:
the raising of the dead from the stage's battlegrounds
the straightening of wigs and fancy gowns
removing knives from stricken breasts,
taking nooses from lifeless necks,
lining up among the living
to face the audience.

The bows, both solo and ensemble
the pale hand of the wounded heart,
the curtseys of the hapless suicide,
the bobbing of the chopped-off head.

The bow in pairs-
rage extends its arm to meekness,
the victim's eyes smile at the torturer,
the rebel indulgently walks besides the tyrant.

Eternity trampled by the golden slipper's toe.
Redeeming values swept aside with the swish of a wide-
brimmed hat.
The unrepentant urge to start all over tomorrow.

Now enter, single file, the hosts who died early on,
in Acts 3 and 4, or between scenes.

The miraculous return of all those without a trace.
The thought that they've been waiting patiently offstage
without taking off their makeup
or their costumes
moves me more than all the tragedy's tirades.

But the curtain's fall is the most uplifting part,
the things you see before it hits the floor:
here one hand quickly reaches for a flower,
there another hand picks up a fallen sword.
Only then one last, unseen hand
does its duty
and grabs me by the throat.”
― Wisława Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

“Now I'm going to tell you how I went into that inexpressiveness that was always my blind, secret quest. How I went into what exists between the number one and the number two, how I saw the mysterious, fiery line, how it is a surreptitious line. Between two musical notes there exists another note, between two facts there exists another fact, between two grains of sand, no matter how close together they are, there exists an interval of space, there exists a sensing between sensing—in the interstices of primordial matter there is the mysterious, fiery line that is the world's breathing, and the world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

“Since life passes, whether sweet or bitter,
Since the soul must pass the lips, whether in Nishapur or Balkh,
Drink wine, for after you and I are gone many a moon
Will pass from old to new, from new to old”
― Omar Khayyám

“In truth, it is a quarrel they are going to settle.
But it is one that for the past hundreds of years has mortally separated Algiers and Oran. Back in history, these two North African cities would have already bled each other white as Pisa and Florence did in happier times.
Their rivalry is all the stronger just because it probably has no basis. Having every reason to like each other, they loathe each other proportionally.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays