The City

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You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

---Cavafy, The City

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Note: The City was a poem much beloved of of Lawrence Durrell, born February 27, 1912 in Jullundur, India
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not enough silence

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Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

--from Ash Wednesday, T.S. Eliot

The Queen of Cups

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Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.
~~--Eliot, The Waste Land


The wisest woman in Europe, feeling cornered,
told me this morning, "The Question
is choosing between waiting
for paint to dry
or leaving footprints and making a mess."

What makes her so wise?
She follows her heart.
She is moved by pain.
She is not discoverer, but
discovered.
She knows

Every pack, even every card
is equally wicked.
Every footnote
an expression of fear.
Every song
is really a prayer.
Every brush of skin
makes for more stories.

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NOTE: Often I write a poem on my birthday. One from five years ago is here.

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