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Resonance Quotes
Resonance
by
Richard Jackson17 ratings, 4.35 average rating, 2 reviews
Resonance Quotes
Showing 1-12 of 12
“After All This"
After all this love, after the birds rip like scissors
through the morning sky, after we leave, when the empty
bed appears like a collapsed galaxy, or the wake of
disturbed air behind a plane, after that, as the wind turns
to stone, as the leaves shriek, you are still breathing
inside my own breath. The lighthouse on the far point
still sweeps away the darkness with the brush of an arm.
The tides inside your heart still pull me towards you.
After all this, what are these words but mollusk shells
a child plays with? What could say more than the eloquence
of last night’s constellations? or the storm anchored by
its own flashes behind the far mountains? I remember
the way your body wavers under my touch like the northern
lights. After all this, I want the certainty of hidden roots
spreading in all directions from their tree. I want to hear
again the sky tangled in your voice. Some nights I can
hear the footsteps of the stars. How can these words
ever reveal the secret that waits in their sleeping light?
The words that walk through my mind say only what has
already passed. Beyond, the swallows are still knitting
the wind. After a while, the smokebush will turn to fire.
After a while, the thin moon will grow like a tear in a curtain.
Under it, a small boy kicks a ball against the wall of
a burned out house. He is too young to remember the war.
He hardly knows the emptiness that kindles around him.
He can speak the language of early birds outside our window.
Someday he will know this kind of love that changes
the color of the sky, and frees the earth from its moorings.
Sometimes I kiss your eyes to see beyond what I can imagine.
Sometimes I think I can speak the language of unborn stars.
I think the whole earth breathes with you. After all this,
these words are all I have to say what is impossible to think,
what shy dreams hide in the rafters of my heart, because
these words are only a form of touch, only tell you I have no life
that isn’t yours, and no death you couldn’t turn into a life.”
― Resonance
After all this love, after the birds rip like scissors
through the morning sky, after we leave, when the empty
bed appears like a collapsed galaxy, or the wake of
disturbed air behind a plane, after that, as the wind turns
to stone, as the leaves shriek, you are still breathing
inside my own breath. The lighthouse on the far point
still sweeps away the darkness with the brush of an arm.
The tides inside your heart still pull me towards you.
After all this, what are these words but mollusk shells
a child plays with? What could say more than the eloquence
of last night’s constellations? or the storm anchored by
its own flashes behind the far mountains? I remember
the way your body wavers under my touch like the northern
lights. After all this, I want the certainty of hidden roots
spreading in all directions from their tree. I want to hear
again the sky tangled in your voice. Some nights I can
hear the footsteps of the stars. How can these words
ever reveal the secret that waits in their sleeping light?
The words that walk through my mind say only what has
already passed. Beyond, the swallows are still knitting
the wind. After a while, the smokebush will turn to fire.
After a while, the thin moon will grow like a tear in a curtain.
Under it, a small boy kicks a ball against the wall of
a burned out house. He is too young to remember the war.
He hardly knows the emptiness that kindles around him.
He can speak the language of early birds outside our window.
Someday he will know this kind of love that changes
the color of the sky, and frees the earth from its moorings.
Sometimes I kiss your eyes to see beyond what I can imagine.
Sometimes I think I can speak the language of unborn stars.
I think the whole earth breathes with you. After all this,
these words are all I have to say what is impossible to think,
what shy dreams hide in the rafters of my heart, because
these words are only a form of touch, only tell you I have no life
that isn’t yours, and no death you couldn’t turn into a life.”
― Resonance
“I imagined a dark world
where the stars clamor to be inside us. Whatever we invent
becomes the history we have to live. In truth, it takes only
a handful of history’s shadows to commandeer our dreams
It takes a famine of the heart to empty the streets of our words.
It takes an imaginary terror to rid ourselves of imagination.”
― Resonance
where the stars clamor to be inside us. Whatever we invent
becomes the history we have to live. In truth, it takes only
a handful of history’s shadows to commandeer our dreams
It takes a famine of the heart to empty the streets of our words.
It takes an imaginary terror to rid ourselves of imagination.”
― Resonance
“Sometimes it seems that all our words, even those for love,
are written in another language. And yet they still arrive,
distant, full of their own silences which may be what
allows us to invent another story, what saves us. What is
the word for the kind of love the woman shows now?
A word that contains the whole story the way her lamp
contains her room,
— Richard Jackson, from “The Whole Story,” Resonance: Poems (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)”
― Resonance
are written in another language. And yet they still arrive,
distant, full of their own silences which may be what
allows us to invent another story, what saves us. What is
the word for the kind of love the woman shows now?
A word that contains the whole story the way her lamp
contains her room,
— Richard Jackson, from “The Whole Story,” Resonance: Poems (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)”
― Resonance
“Sometimes I kiss your eyes to see beyond what I can imagine.
Sometimes I think I can speak the language of unborn stars.
I think the whole earth breathes with you. After all this,
these words are all I have to say what is impossible to think,
what shy dreams hide in the rafters of my heart, because
these words are only a form of touch, only tell you I have no life
that isn’t yours, and no death you couldn’t turn into a life.
— Richard Jackson, from “After All This.” Resonance. (Ashland Poetry Press January 15, 2010)”
― Resonance
Sometimes I think I can speak the language of unborn stars.
I think the whole earth breathes with you. After all this,
these words are all I have to say what is impossible to think,
what shy dreams hide in the rafters of my heart, because
these words are only a form of touch, only tell you I have no life
that isn’t yours, and no death you couldn’t turn into a life.
— Richard Jackson, from “After All This.” Resonance. (Ashland Poetry Press January 15, 2010)”
― Resonance
“There are times when I feel you might be searching for me, when I can read what is written on the far sides of stars.
— Richard Jackson, from “Alternate Endings,” Resonance (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)”
― Resonance
— Richard Jackson, from “Alternate Endings,” Resonance (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)”
― Resonance
“If you ask me do I love you, I have to tell you
that I have never loved you, not even now, not tomorrow.
In this way, I can begin to love you again and again
because there is no past. This is the way the moon
unbutton the stars as it passes overhead.
The way even the most distant galaxies continue to tug on us.
This is the way I love you.
from “If You Ask Me”
― Resonance
that I have never loved you, not even now, not tomorrow.
In this way, I can begin to love you again and again
because there is no past. This is the way the moon
unbutton the stars as it passes overhead.
The way even the most distant galaxies continue to tug on us.
This is the way I love you.
from “If You Ask Me”
― Resonance
“I imagined a dark world
where the stars clamor to be inside us. Whatever we invent
becomes the history we have to live. In truth, it takes only
a handful of history’s shadows to commandeer our dreams
It takes a famine of the heart to empty the streets of our words.
It takes an imaginary terror to rid ourselves of imagination.
from “Involuntary Beginnings”
― Resonance
where the stars clamor to be inside us. Whatever we invent
becomes the history we have to live. In truth, it takes only
a handful of history’s shadows to commandeer our dreams
It takes a famine of the heart to empty the streets of our words.
It takes an imaginary terror to rid ourselves of imagination.
from “Involuntary Beginnings”
― Resonance
“I don’t want to see you caught like a word in that last line.
What does the nightingale do when it runs out of things to say?
Only this: I have never been so astonished at the love of one woman
which is the way the moon finally closes its eye behind a ridge,
the way the wind never stays around long enough to see
what it has brought.”
― Resonance
What does the nightingale do when it runs out of things to say?
Only this: I have never been so astonished at the love of one woman
which is the way the moon finally closes its eye behind a ridge,
the way the wind never stays around long enough to see
what it has brought.”
― Resonance
“My own words cast a shadow a never meant. Please forget them.
Or not. The shadows we speak sometimes are what tell us
how astonishing the morning, is, as here, where
a last owl tightens a grip on a branch,
where a last chance circles with the first swallows.”
― Resonance
Or not. The shadows we speak sometimes are what tell us
how astonishing the morning, is, as here, where
a last owl tightens a grip on a branch,
where a last chance circles with the first swallows.”
― Resonance
“If you ask me do I love you, I have to tell you
that I have never loved you, not even now, not tomorrow.
In this way, I can begin to love you again and again
because there is no past. This is the way the moon
unbutton the stars as it passes overhead.
The way even the most distant galaxies continue to tug on us.
This is the way I love you.”
― Resonance
that I have never loved you, not even now, not tomorrow.
In this way, I can begin to love you again and again
because there is no past. This is the way the moon
unbutton the stars as it passes overhead.
The way even the most distant galaxies continue to tug on us.
This is the way I love you.”
― Resonance
“Maybe we have to betray ourselves in order
just to be ourselves. In the end, Truth taps
at the window of our souls. What quivers on the lake
are only the footprints of Fate. Even our astronomers
hear the funeral sounds of dying galaxies before they
ever see them. Gusts of time are filling my lungs.”
― Resonance
just to be ourselves. In the end, Truth taps
at the window of our souls. What quivers on the lake
are only the footprints of Fate. Even our astronomers
hear the funeral sounds of dying galaxies before they
ever see them. Gusts of time are filling my lungs.”
― Resonance
