Sunday, August 21, 2011

Nothing Else (a poem by Charles Simic)

Friends of the small hours of the night:
Stub of a pencil, small notebook,
Reading lamp on the table,
Making me welcome in your circle of light.

I care little the house is dark and cold
With you sharing my absorption
In this book in which now and then a sentence
Is worth repeating again in a whisper.

Without you, there'd be only my own pale face
Reflected in the black windowpane,
And the bare trees and deep snow
Waiting for me out there in the dark.


found without looking

















God is only a name for our wonder. We know that supernaturalism is a lie, and therefore miss its truth as myth—as the theory of human correspondences.

I cannot live without the belief that there is a purposeful connection that I may yet understand which I can serve. I cannot be faithless to my own conviction of value.

Alfred Kazin, from Alfred Kazin’s Journals