Sight Lines Quotes

“no jackal-headed god needs to weigh
your heart against an eagle feather--”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Heat waves ripple up from a highway
outside a grapefruit farm near Salton Sea--

the road dissolves into shimmering sand”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“The unfolding of a life has junctures

that rupture plot”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Astronomers

have observed two black holes colliding;
and, though the waves support relativity,

we need no equation to feel the sprang of space
and time.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“and you surge at what's enfolded in this world:”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“In the five a.m. dark, a car with bright lights
and hazard lights blinking drives directly at me;
veering across the yellow lines, I pass by it

and exhale: amethyst crystals accrete
on a string: I will live to see pear
blossoms in the orchard, red-winged black-

birds nesting in the cattails”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“expectancies, fears, yearnings—

hardly bits of colored glass
revolving in a kaleidoscope:
mist rising from a hot spring

along a river”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“and, as the angle of sunlight shifts, you feel

a seasonal tilt into winter with its expanse
of stars—candles flickering down the Ganges,

where you light a candle on a leaf and set it
flickering, downstream, into darkness—

dozens of tiny flames flickering into darkness—
then you gaze at fires erupting along the shore.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Zunis make shrines on the way to a lake where I emerge and
Miwoks gather me out of pools along the Pacific the cheetah
thirsts for me and when you sprinkle me on rib eye you have
no idea how I balance silence with thunder in crystal”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“so many years later, on a coast, waves rolling to shore,
wave after wave,

I see how our lives have unfolded,
a sheen of
wave after whitening wave—”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“We who must rage and lust,
hurtle zigzagging between cars
in traffic, affirm

the call to abandon illusions
is a call to abandon
a condition that requires illusions”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Last night, you sped past revolving and flashing
red, blue, and white lights along the road—

a wildfire in the dark; though no one
you knew was taken in the midnight ambulance,

an arrow struck a bull’s-eye and quivered
in its shaft: one minute gratitude rises

like water from an underground lake;
another, dissolution gnaws from a black center.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“when the last speaker of a language dies,
a hue vanishes from the spectrum of visible light.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“you can urge the dare and thrill
of bliss if and when you stop to look at a rock at a fence post
but you cough only look yes look at me now because you are blink
about to leave—”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“I am flinging your words and if you absorb not blot my
song you could learn you are not alone in pain and grief though
you’ve instilled pain and grief”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“if you slowed you could discover that mosquitoes bat
their wings six hundred times a second and before they mate
synchronize their wings you could feel how they flicker with
desire”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Though death might not come like a curare-
dipped dart blown out of a tube or slam
at you like surf breaking over black lava rock,

it will come—it will come—and it unites us—
brother, sister, boxer, spinner—in this pact,
while you inscribe a letter with trembling hand.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“You can travel

to where the Tigris and Euphrates flow together
and admire the inventions of people living
on floating islands of reeds; you can travel

along an archipelago and hike among volcanic
pools steaming with water and sulfuric acid;
but you can’t change the eventual, adamant body.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“As chlorophyll slips into the roots of a cottonwood
and the leaves burst into yellow gold, I wonder,
where’s our mortal flare?”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“the more I fingered the clay slab into a bowl,
the more misshapen it became; though I have

botched this, bungled that, the errancies
reveal it would not be better if things happened

just as I wished”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Stopped in cars, we are waiting to accelerate
along different trajectories.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“The day has the tensile strength of silk:

you card the hours, spin them, dip
the skeins in a dye pot, and grief or anger,

pleasure or elation’s the mordant that fixes
the hue.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“yesterday a coyote trotted across
my headlights and turned his head

but didn't break stride; that's how
I want to live on this planet:

alive to a rabbit at a glass door--
and flower where there is no flower.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“From this window, he views banana leaves,
an orange tree with five oranges, houses
with shingled roofs, and steps leading
to an upstairs apartment; father off, palm trees,
and, beyond, a sloping street, ocean, sky;
but what line of sight leads to revelation?”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Porch light illuminating white steps, light
over a garage door, darkness inside windows--
and the darkness exposes the tenuous.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Soon
ducks will nest on the pond island, and as

a retired violinist who fed skunks left a legacy--
one she least expected--we fold this
in our pocket and carry it wherever we go.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“A neighbor brings cucumbers and basil;
when you open the bag and inhale, the world
inside is fire in a night courtyard

at summer solstice”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“Once is glimpsing the Perseid meteor shower--
and, as emotion curves space, I find
a constellation that arcs beyond the visible.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“now I block the past by writing the present--”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

“you try to root in the world, but events sizzle
along razor wire, along a snapping end of a power line.”
― Arthur Sze, Sight Lines