Life and Existence

Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

In this most Christian of worlds

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm, On a day I already remember. I shall die in Paris—it does not bother me— Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn. 1

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink.

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow… Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow… Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning;

Death devours all lovely things; Lesbia with her sparrow Shares the darkness—presently Every bed is narrow.

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light. 1

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

We, the rescued, Beg you: Show us your sun, but gradually. Lead us from star to star, step by step. Be gentle when you teach us to live again. 2

O the chimneys On the ingeniously devised habitations of death When Israel’s body drifted as smoke Through the air— Was welcomed by a star, a chimney sweep, A star that turned black Or was it a ray of sun? 1

You are eternity’s hostage A captive of time.

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I must confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate. Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed… here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.

That was a time when only the dead could smile.

To joyously savor one single instant of initial life I seek an innocent country 1

To joyously savor one single instant of initial life I seek an innocent country 1

The only freedom the gods grant us Of our own free will to their sovereignty. Since only in the illusion of freedom

How should I know what I’ll be, I who don’t know what I am? Be what I think? But I think of being so many things! And there are so many who think of being the same thing that we can’t all be it! Genius? At this moment A hundred thousand brains are dreaming they’re geniuses like me, And it may be that history won’t remember even one, All their imagined conquests amounting to so much dung.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?