Lines arranged in such a way as to suggest a face but they’re not really lines and not arranged the way flesh holds us together one might almost see cloud paintings if they were there and we were here as we imagine ourselves to be where the sky and river meet oh it is such vanity to speak! [ 747 ]
Salt on a sparrow’s tail, and a world of things unseen — Dear one — your hand — is shaking — [ 704 ]
Lower than the lowest cloud — higher than the highest tree — Brighter than the brightest sun — darker than the deepest grave — What are these thoughts — but almost — not quite — all — or none — of me? What are these things — but imagined — distinguished — company? What are these wings — but the wind’s — divine — philosophy? [ 680 ]
Noted thus far, very lightly in pencil, near the top of the blank page opposite the Index of First Lines, the poems numbered 435, 712, and 730, beginning, respectively, Much Madness is divinest Sense — I could not stop for Death — Defrauded I a Butterfly — all three of which are old favorites of mine — and yet when I encountered them in my slow but steady progress through […]
Do I know you as well as I know those I know in the flesh? Yes. Because in both ways of knowing, it’s really my imagination that creates you. Is this a way of saying I don’t know you at all, or that I know you ever so little? Yes. And that, too, is beautiful. Do you know me? Is that something I can ever know? I don’t know. Do […]
Are You Listening? There are times when the spirit-feeling is so powerful that physical boundaries — gravity, flesh, walls, even death — seem to melt and fade in its presence. And yet this feeling might well be physical itself. But why assume there is a difference at all? Would I do so if I were a giant sequoia, in nightly contact with the stars? Some will say man cannot […]
Maybe it’s not a question of whether, where, or when the flesh and the imagination meet, but how long it’s been since you’ve joined them. After the Bath you draw with your fingertip on warm naked skin and then call the poem a rose Recently Banned Literature, December 30, 3016 [ 604 ]
This is my only notebook. Search the house high and low, and you’ll not find another — unless it’s my body; which, familiar as it seems, is really a record of what the stars said, a long, long time ago. How I love the short days; the long nights; the cold-dark intimacy of winter. The sun’s a pin on a gray lapel. Move as lightly as you can through this […]
The spirit of a book? The flesh of a man? The book is flesh. The spirit is man. Preface to the First Edition Each time I pick it up, I find this book has changed. So many bends in the road, So many landmarks. Death. Rejuvenation. Bloody thorns and hollow skulls. The whisper of inspired stones. The velvet hush of stars. The crush of tattered ages. Garments torn that […]
William Michaelian 