Stag's Leap Quotes

“I did not know him, I knew my idea
of him.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me,
I did not leave him, he did not leave me,
I freed him, he freed me.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“it is
forbidden to love where we are not loved”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“Some people think I should
be over my ex by now — maybe
I thought I might have been over him more
by now. Maybe I’m half over who he
was, but not who I thought he was, and not
over the wound, sudden deathblow
as if out of nowhere, though it came from the core
of our life together.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“each hour is a room of shame, and I am
swimming, swimming, holding my head up,
smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,
like being naked with the clothed, or being
a child, having to try to behave
while hating the terms of your life.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“let’s part
equals, as we were in every bed, pure
equals of the earth”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“He fell in love with her because I
didn't suit him anymore -
nor him, me, though I could not see it, but he
saw it for me.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“If I could
choose, a place to die,”
it would never have been in your arms, old darling”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“as if languagelessness was a step up, in evolution, from the chatter of consciousness.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“And you couldn’t say,
could you, that the touch you had from me
was other than the touch of one
who could love for life—whether we were suited
or not—for life, like a sentence. And now that I
consider, the touch that I had from you
became not the touch of the long view, but like the
tolerant willingness of one
who is passing through.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“There Was an Old Woman Called Nothing-at-All,
Who Lived in a Dwelling Exceedingly Small;
A Man Stretched His Mouth to the Utmost Extent,
And Down at One Gulp House and Old Woman Went.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“I've said that he and I had been crazy
for each other. But maybe my ex and I were not
crazy for each other. Maybe we
were sane for each other, as if our desire
was almost not even personal -
it was personal, but that hardly mattered, since there
seemed to be no other woman
or man in the world.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“I want to relearn the intervals, to
journey with a man among the thirds and fifths,
augumented, diminshed, with a light touch,
sforzando, rallentando, agitato, the usual
adores and dotes - and of course what I reaaly
want is some low notes.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“I guess that's how people go on, without
knowing how.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“And sometimes I feel as if,
already, I am not here—”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“So much had become so connected to him
that it seemed to belong to him, so that now,
flying, for hours, above the Atlantic
still felt like being over his realm.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“and my job is to eat the whole car
of my anger, part by part, some parts
ground down to steel-dust.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“but he does not want to talk about it,
he wants a stillness at the end of it.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“One of us
maybe a little too much a hunter,
the other a little too polar of affection,
polar of summer mysteriousness,
magnetic in reticent mourning.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“And it entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard by me, untouched by me,
but known by others, seen by others,
heard, touched.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“And no, he does not
want to meet again, in a year—when we
part, it is with a dry bow
and Good-bye.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“and for an instant
he's alive toward me, a gem of sea of
pond in his eye. Then that retreat into himself,
which always moved me, as if there were
a sideways gravity, in him, toward some
vanishing point.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“Now I see
I've been hoping, each time we meet, that he would praise me
for how well I took it, but it's not to be.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“But if feels as if he's not here—
though he's here, it feels as if, for me,
there's no one there”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“We have always been going back, since birth,
back toward not being alive.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“I think he loved being loved”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“That moved me so much about you,
the way you were a dumbstruck one
and yet you seemed to know everything
I did not know”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“If I could
choose, a place to die,”
it would never have been in your arms, old darling,
we figured I'd see you out, in mine”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“And slowly he starts to seem more far
away, he seems to waft, drift
at a distance”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

“and love
seemed to rest, on us, in a place
where, for that hour, it felt death could not
reach, and someone was singing in my hearing, without
words, that no one can live without reaching
death, but I could have lived without having
loved almost without reserve, and for a
moment, then, I thought I lived forever with him.”
― Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems