New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

“Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.”

“1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization.12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.”

“But there is nothing in me, just fear,nothing but the running of dark waves.”

“—Most distinguished voyager, what was your eon like?—Comic. Terror is forgotten.Only the ridiculous is remembered by posterity.Death from a wound, from a noose, from starvationIs one death, but folly is uncounted and new every year.”

“If only the stars contained me.If only everything kept happening in such a wayThat the so-called world opposed the so-called flesh.”

“Who I will be when I wake after enduring”

“Esse"I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn’t notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin – but why isn’t the power of sight absolute? – and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.”

“Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold. The purest light of the celestial dome has burned me through. And now we are as two still plains lying in darkness, as two black banks of a frozen stream in the chasm of the world.Our hair combed back is carved in wood, the moon walks over our ebony shoulders. A distant cockcrow, the night goes by, silent. Rich is the rime of love, withered the dowry. Where are you, living in what depths of time, love, stepping down into what waters, now, when the frost of our voiceless lips does not fend off the divine fires?”

“But there is nothing in me, just fear, nothing but the running of dark waves. I am the wind that blows and dies out in dark waters, I am the wind going and not returning, a milkweed pollen on the black meadows of the world.”