terribly

Alasdair Gray: God Again

 Poems
Oct 272017
 

I brooded on dark water,
was neither fish nor bird,
an unembodied voice
that made all things by word,

made light, space, words and time
creatures that glow and grow,
bodies that shine above
and root, glide, creep below.

Seeing all this was good
I wanted creatures who
will share my admiration
of everything I do.

Though always bodiless
I have a certain form
so modelled it in clay,
gave breath to make it warm.

You are my image, folks,
greater than all you see
in intellectual scope,
but not as great as me.

Your dreadful faults, alas,
reflect what I desired:
a need to make new life,
a need to be admired.

New lives made with labour,
bodies requiring breath,
come to displace their makers,
condemning them to death.

I will not mend the faults
that generate your woes.
Mistakes can be creative too,
as every artist knows.

(2002)

Lao-Tze

 Quotes
Oct 272017
 

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Anne Michaels: Not

 Poems  Tagged with:
Oct 032017
 

not will, not desire:
perhaps prayer

not still:
held

at the end you said:
I want to keep my eyes open,
to miss nothing

not entreaty, not regret
not future, not past:
touch and warm weight

breath and again:
what word can be heard

not loss, not absence:
perhaps soul

not inside, not outside:
dusk’s doorway

not alone

from All We Saw: Poems

Henry David Thoreau: We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake

 Quotes
Sep 302017
 

It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

– Walden

Henry David Thoreau: However mean your life is, meet it and live it…

 Quotes
Aug 252017
 

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
–Walden