Status Updates From Selected Writings

Our poetics, furthermore, is based on melody: rhythmic caprice is personal.

To draw that rare spirit of the poet into the agitations that stir the common race of men is to cause him to trip on his own wings.

I have known the cruelties and madnesses of men. I have been betrayed, paid with ingratitude and calumny, misunderstood in my best intentions by ill-inspired men, attacked, vilified. And I have smiled sadly. After all, everything is nothing, la gloire included.

And when we awaken, we smile at the memory of the delights we saw in our sleep. Then, we frown and our eyes darken, for we meet reality—the dreams were only dreams.

Oh, you flame almost extinguished, bird lost in the wide human forest! You will go far, far away, you will pass like a quick vision, and you will never know that there has been a dreamer near you, who has thought of you and written a page in your memory—a dreamer in love, perhaps, with that waxen pallor, that melancholy, the enchantment of that sickly face, with you, in a word, dove of Bohemia [...]

Far out on the line, as though drawn by a blue pencil, that divided the ocean from the sky, the sun was going down, with its gold dust and its wisps of purplish cloud, like an immense disk of red-hot iron.

Do you recall those plans of yours for a novel about the lighthouse? Well, you had good reason to believe that the elements of novels and poetry soar like seabirds around these light-machines.

No pain’s greater than the pain of being aware.

(And yet, in secret,
I’m your one true friend,
since more than once you’ve poured
the elixir of the moon
into the cup of my sorrow,
those celestial droplets of God . . .)

And in my soul, light extends itself in fullness
like the moon’s bird skimming the lake’s tranquility.

We’re Romantics. . . . Is there anyone who Is,
who isn’t? If you’ve never met the test
of love and pain, or never sung a kiss,
hang yourself from a pine: it’s for the best . . .

In my soul, celestial nightingales made a sound
that I could hear echoing on shore like a cry.
I turned to look and saw it was an illusion
that my ancient heart had let go and forgotten.
Then, fixed on the infinite azure of the sky,
to erase all the old bitterness in the breeze,
one day I covered my ears like Achilles.

The author has gone a bit too far in his criticism of USA. Such contempt!