brittanymarie.neocities.org

I like a look of agony,
Because I know it's true;

- Emily Dickinson

As I went through the marshes
a doe sprang out of the corn
and flashed up the hill-side
leaving her fawn.

On the sky-line
she moved round to watch,
she pricked a fine black blotch
on the sky.

I looked at her
and felt her watching;
I became a strange being.
Still, I had my right to be there with her.

Her nimble shadow trotting
along the sky-line, she
put back her fine, level-balanced head.
And I knew her.

- D.H. Lawrence, A Doe at Evening

Suddenly on a wall mirror
my face assaulted me
stunned to see itself

- Earle Birney, For George Lamming

I thought there were limits to this falling away,
This emptiness. I was wrong.

- D.G. Jones, I Thought There Were Limits

The sky is made for hawks.
Their screams come from deep inside,
a long glistening vein
pulled from my gut, stretched into sound.

Yesterday I watched one
take a rabbit
and felt no sentiment. I, too,
want to sink into something soft,

tear and rend, all that
tenderness ripped apart,
the rabbit - my heart -
with its leaps and sudden terror.

- Lorna Crozier, Hawk and Rabbit

I don't know what to do.
I think yes - and then no.

- Sappho, Fragment 51

I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door,
And never be put on again.

- Louisa Fletcher, The Land of Beginning Again

Fire will envelop me
yet I won't burn

- Irving Layton, If I Lie Still

My Guardian Angel? Yes, indeed. I've known
I've had one all along - felt certain she
Was watching me - was watching over me;
Guiding each forward step, and if a stone
Stood in my path she smiled and it was gone.

- A.J.M. Smith, Angels Exist, and Sonnets Are Not Dead

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
so placid and self-contain'd;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their
sins;

- Walt Whitman, Animals