Eating Fire Quotes

“...This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar...”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“Orpheus 2

He has been trying to sing
Love into existence again
And he has failed.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“They say:
Speak for us (to whom?)
Some say: Avenge us (on whom?)
Some say: Take our place.
Some say: Witness
Others say (and these are women)
Be happy for us.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“He has been trying to sing
Love into existence again
And he has failed.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“Eurydice

He is here, come down to look for you.
It is the song that calls you back,
a song of joy and suffering
equally: a promise:
that things will be different up there
than they were last time.

You would rather have gone on feeling nothing,
emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace
of the deepest sea, which is easier
than the noise and flesh of the surface.

You are used to these blanched dim corridors,
you are used to the king
who passes you without speaking.

The other one is different
and you almost remember him.
He says he is singing to you
because he loves you,

not as you are now,
so chilled and minimal: moving and still
both, like a white curtain blowing
in the draft from a half-opened window
beside a chair on which nobody sits.

He wants you to be what he calls real.
He wants you to stop light.
He wants to feel himself thickening
like a treetrunk or a haunch
and see blood on his eyelids
when he closes them, and the sun beating.

This love of his is not something
he can do if you aren’t there,
but what you knew suddenly as you left your body
cooling and whitening on the lawn

was that you love him anywhere,
even in this land of no memory,
even in this domain of hunger.
You hold love in your hand, a red seed
you had forgotten you were holding.

He has come almost too far.
He cannot believe without seeing,
and it’s dark here.
Go back, you whisper,

but he wants to be fed again
by you. O handful of gauze, little
bandage, handful of cold
air, it is not through him
you will get your freedom.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“TRUE STORIES

Don't ask for the true story;
why do you need it?

It's not what I set out with
or what I carry.

What I'm sailing with,
a knife, blue fire,

luck, a few good words
that still work and the tide.

The true story was lost
on the way down to the beach, it's something

I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light,

my blurred footprints
filling with salt

water, this handful
of tiny bones, this owl's kill.

a moon, crumpled papers, a coin,
the glint of an old picnic,

the hollows made by lovers
in the sand a hundred

years ago: no clue

The true story lies
among the other stories;

a mess of colors, like jumbled clothing,
thrown off or away,

like hearts on marble, like syllables like
butchers' discards.

The true story is vicious
and multiple and untrue

after all. Why do you
need it? Don't ever

ask for the true story.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“A Sad Child

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“I say, leave me
alone, this is my winter”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“oh I’d give anything
to have it back again, in
the flesh, the flesh,
which was all the time
I ever had for anything. The joy.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off in the long run.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn’t be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know.”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“The gods don’t listen to reason,
they need what they need –”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95

“You’ll notice that what they have in common
is between the legs. Is this
why wars are fought?”
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire : Selected Poetry, 1965-95