Vinhos
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When the Creator created the earth, the bear was made the master of all the beasts. The wolf, the fox, and the wolverene paid homage to him. But the wild reindeer refused to obey him, and ran about free, as before. One day the Forest-Owner was hunting...
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The Cities of the Red Night were six in number: Tamaghis, Ba'dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, and Ghadis. These cities were located in an area roughly corresponding to the Gobi Desert, a hundred thousand years ago. At that thime the desert was...
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The kid survived. He survived the best or the worst the enemy had to offer. Among his captors he became an awesome legend, an insane, grinning devil. Once they put the screws to him and he agreed to confess. He confessed that he had been snatched from...
- Cool Air
"As the weeks passed, I observed with regret that my new friend was indeed slowly but unmistakably losing ground physically, as Mrs. Herrero had suggested. The livid aspect of his countenance was intensified, his voice became more hollow and indistinct,...
- Antiphon For Evariste Galois
Until the sun I have no time But the flash of thought is like the sun — Sudden, absolute: Watch at the desk, through the window raised on the flawless dark, The hand that trembles in the light, Lucid, sudden. Until the sun I have no time The image...
Vinhos
Doubt
With careless hands a child kills an ant, many ants. Flies are far trickier, though once caught, they have little chance. And if darting birds don’t grab them first, butterflies die a natural death; few people — collectors excepted — willfully steal such tremulous beauty.
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It has the marks of permanent war. Beetles, good at hiding, keep close to the ground. Wisława Szymborska finds one dead on a dirt road, “three pairs of legs … neatly folded across its belly.” She stops and stares. “The horror of the site is moderate,” she writes. “Sorrow is not contagious.” But still doubt remains:
For our peace of mind, animals do not pass away,
but die a seemingly shallower death
losing — we’d like to believe — fewer feelings and less world,
exiting — or so it seems — a less tragic stage.
An uncommon sensibility. Almost like a child meeting death for the first time, grasping analogy, tentatively building a bridge. Tentatively. The poet is tentative. Her knowledge of the small (and sometimes large) acts of bad faith through which we live our lives is what makes the poem.
@ Insectopedia, Hugh Raffles, 2010.
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When the Creator created the earth, the bear was made the master of all the beasts. The wolf, the fox, and the wolverene paid homage to him. But the wild reindeer refused to obey him, and ran about free, as before. One day the Forest-Owner was hunting...
-
The Cities of the Red Night were six in number: Tamaghis, Ba'dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, and Ghadis. These cities were located in an area roughly corresponding to the Gobi Desert, a hundred thousand years ago. At that thime the desert was...
-
The kid survived. He survived the best or the worst the enemy had to offer. Among his captors he became an awesome legend, an insane, grinning devil. Once they put the screws to him and he agreed to confess. He confessed that he had been snatched from...
- Cool Air
"As the weeks passed, I observed with regret that my new friend was indeed slowly but unmistakably losing ground physically, as Mrs. Herrero had suggested. The livid aspect of his countenance was intensified, his voice became more hollow and indistinct,...
- Antiphon For Evariste Galois
Until the sun I have no time But the flash of thought is like the sun — Sudden, absolute: Watch at the desk, through the window raised on the flawless dark, The hand that trembles in the light, Lucid, sudden. Until the sun I have no time The image...