Kasimir

before the fires

i saw them, elder and younger,

standing before skuld’s bier

as if to ponder the weaving

cast-off, the last thread snipped

 

skuld sleeping, whose hand

held the shears? who is weeping?

I saw them, taking their measure

of her death shroud, every last

thread where it had always been

 

was always meant to be.

every strand leads us here.

every strand bears in itself

the memory of the knife

 

recoils with the sharp

intuition of the parting

 

i dreamed last night.

i watched you drown in roses

buried one by one in blood-red

thorns and thought:

 

this is right. love lies bleeding.

love carries in itself the seeds

of an ending.

 

i dreamed you were drowning

in roses, and then the roses

were burning, every last

one of them. you returned

to fire

 

as i must imagine

even the distant stars, now cold,

still burning.

 

料得年年肠断处，

明月夜，短松冈。

Here: this night the bright moon
illuminates the desolate short pine hill
I swear my heart breaks further each year.

—<<十年生死两茫茫>>, 苏轼 (Su Shi)

从明天起，做一个幸福的人
Starting tomorrow, I will be happy

[...]

陌生人，我也为你祝福
Stranger, I, too, wish you happiness

愿你有一个灿烂的前程
May you have a brilliant future

愿你有情人终成眷属
May your lovers become family

愿你在尘世获得幸福
May you find happiness on this mortal earth

我只愿面朝大海，春暖花开

I only wish to face the sea, as flowers blossom in the spring warmth

—<<面朝大海，春暖花开>>, 海子 (Hai Zi)

 

 

my existence viewed as the potentiality of your being—now, in the light of that series of recognitions and in the shadow of the onward march of time, was altered, once and for all, in the following manner: your non-existence viewed as the necessary and radical liquidation of my own existence.

 —Kaddish for an Unborn Child, Imre Kertész

 

When you have a fever ranging stubbornly between 39 deg and 40 deg, everything is like this...

it is unspoken.

speaking, speaking
am I not elder
berry
brandy

are you not wine before you find me
in your own beaker?

—Slowly: a plainsong from an older woman to a younger woman, Judy Grahn

Warm summer sun,

    Shine kindly here,

Warm southern wind,

    Blow softly here.

Green sod above,

    Lie light, lie light.

Good night, dear heart,

    Good night, good night.

-Warm Summer Sun, Walt Whitman

At dawn you leave. The river wears its skin of light.
And I traced love’s loss to the origin of light.

—Of Light, Agha Shahid Ali

Saw it when re-reading a game and had to comment: man that's one very beautiful pfp!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/meta.12599

Probably the best paper since the parachute RCT back and forth.

"The Son of Autumn dispatched many men in answer to your prayers, sweet Ista. They turned aside upon their roads, and did not arrive. For He could not bend their wills, nor their steps. And so they scattered to the winds as leaves do."

His lips curved up, in a smile more deathly serious than any scowl Ista had ever seen. "Now another prays, in despair as dark as yours. One as dear to me as Teidez was to my Brother of Autumn. And I have sent—you. Will you turn aside? As Teidez's deliverance did? At the last, with so few steps left to travel?"

Silence fell between them.

Ista's throat was clogged with rage. And more complicated things, a boiling mixture even she could not separate and name. A stew of anguish, she supposed. She snarled through her teeth, "Lord Bastard, you bastard."

—Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

Ista reached for another cord, repeating the gesture of plucking and combing. It was a man, one of the officers; his mouth opened on a beginning scream. I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right.

You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her.

It is imperfect.

So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.

—Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

"It used to rain here more often."

"Because you sacrificed people to the rain gods."

"Your system kills, too. You've not eliminated sacrifices, you've democratised them—everyone dies a little every day, and the poor and desperate are the worst injured." He pointed at one of the street cleaners. "Your bosses grind them to nothing, until they have no choice but to mortgage their souls and sell their bodies as cheap labor. We honoured our sacrifices in the old days. You sneer at them." 

—Two Serpents Rise, Max Gladstone.

"Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter."

"Raggedy man, goodnight."

takht ya takhta

Mishuk gotal'u meshuroke, pako kyore.

"Alles ändert sich, wenn man ein Ziel hat."

“We like to believe, or pretend, we know what we are doing in our lives. It can be a lie. Winds blow, waves carry us, rain drenches a man caught in the open at night, lightning shatters the sky and sometimes his heart, thunder crashes into him bringing the awareness he will die. We stand up, as best we can under that. We move forward as best we can, hoping for light, kindness, mercy, for ourselves and those we love.”

—A Brightness Long Ago, Guy Gavriel Kay

Seems like they hit on a real gem this year. Happy birthday Singapore  

“If a made-up mind （成心) counts as a teacher, then who doesn’t have a teacher? Why should it just be the self-chosen experts on the order of things who have them? Stupid people would have them, too. But to have right and wrong before you’ve made up your mind—that’s like leaving for Yue today and getting there yesterday! That’s like saying what isn’t is. What isn’t is? Even the spiritual sage Yu couldn’t make sense of that.” (Ivanhoe & Van Norden, 2001).