Heartwall Quotes

“[B]ecause now
in this moment which is so wondrous the way
it lies beside you, I either do not exist or the past
has never existed, either my breath is
the breath of stars or I do not breathe as I turn to you,
as you breathe my name, my heart,
as the net of stars dissolves above us, as you wrap
yourself around me like honeysuckle, the moon
turning pale because it is so drained by our love,
so that before this moment, before you lay beneath me,
you must have disguised yourself the way the killdeer
you pointed out diverts intruders to save what it loves.
pretending a broken wing, giving itself over finally
to whatever forces, whatever love, whatever touch,
whatever suffering it needs just to say I am here,
I am always here, stroking the wings of your soul.

—Richard Jackson, closing lines to “Sonata of Love’s History,” Heartwall<?i> (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000)”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall

“Suddenly it seems memory is impossible.
Who can say what fills the coffin of the moment?
Are we, then, like moths at a candle, glowing
longer than life is left in us? I don’t know
how much longer it is possible to stay in a poem
like this one, sifting through the ashes of the future.

—Richard Jackson, from “Possibility,” Heartwall (University of Massachuetts Press, 2000)”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall

“There is an open window at the end
of each sentence for you. Maybe I am
only that quarter moon pinching a star awake
over your shoulder—do you hear?—
taking my words from libraries
of the wind, my dreams from the heart’s barracks,
but sensing, too, the sound of your soul
arriving before you do, the way, as a boy, I’d lay my head
down on the track not to sleep, but to listen for approaching trains.

—Richard Jackson, closing lines to “Decaf Zombies of the Heart,” Heartwall (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000)”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall

“Now the wind is lifting the eyelid of the lake.
I remember my soul breaks open like a seed beneath
the ground just to think of you.”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall

“Is there
any way we can purely touch the world again, the way
a salamander does, breathing through its skin? Can we
become the strands of this shrine we weave ourselves into
hoping to emerge into a world where—where what?
There is no end to desire, which means no end to regret,
no end to our need for an ending, so that even the sky refuses
our touch, that sky which, at its bluest, is the most empty.”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall

“I am sorry my words sometimes frighten
the fireflies from your dreams, I am sorry that battalions of doubt
have pitched camp in your heart. It would be crazy to love you
as much as I do. It is 3:03 and by now the whole universe is
attracted to you so that I feel gobbled up like the ice in a comet.


I am sorry the time is passing so slowly.
I am sorry, birds, for not mentioning you again until the end.
My fifth grade teacher said comets are angels.
You can determine the exact makeup of a comet
by spectrographic analysis. An X ray of this poem would reveal
dark spots on its heart. It would reveal the smallest memories—
my hand resting so gently on your hip that it requires
great effort just to stay on this earth,
how your legs seem to become
part of your bicycle and you seem to fly into a world
that lies beside this one.”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall