Mohamed Hayibor, Church of Christ, Scientist (2016)
Duet On Mass Ave, June, 1981
over the sound of summer fountains I heard your melody echo the city ten true summers we’ll be there and laughing too bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven!
Eastman Kodak Company, “How to make good movies…” (1938)
The many faces of defeat Invite you home: They offer you such silence As has no truck with time. The face of horrid purpose, The train of circumstance There, the door is closed upon; They shall no more advance. Yet see in the uncertain sky Above your uncertain station– The sign she left you, passing, Persists in affirmation.
Alicia Chen, “Girl listening to music by window” (ca. 2015)
Music—the world that might be, and yet the world as it is. The heart comes out of hiding, saying to us: “Listen, you can say anything you want now. Here is the instrument.”
on a planet that is spinning things move away from you at 1,037 miles per hour on your knees you need something to hold it only comes near every 75 or 76 years — it was last seen in 1986 “eppur si muove” she said
So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.
cf. Richard Avedon, “Carmen, Homage To Munkacsi, Coat By Cardin, Place François-Premier, Paris” (ca. 1957) and Horst Ehricht, “All the rage in Paris” (Maclean’s Magazine, 1977)
I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wish’d-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw in gradual vision through my tears The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years— Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, ‘Guess now who holds thee?’— ‘Death,’ I said. But there The silver answer rang— ‘Not Death, but Love.’
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese: i
EXCEPT the smaller size, no Lives are round, These hurry to a sphere, and show, and end. The larger, slower grow, and later hang— The Summers of Hesperides are long.
A poor torn heart, a tattered heart, That sat it down to rest, Nor noticed that the ebbing day Flowed silver to the west, Nor noticed night did soft descend Nor constellation burn, Intent upon the vision Of latitudes unknown…
The U.S. National Archives, “A youngster, clutching his soldier father, gazes upward while the latter lifts his wife from the ground to wish her a ‘Merry Christmas.’ The serviceman is one of those fortunate enough to be able to get home for the holidays.” (December, 1944)
And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle; A thing of soft misnomers, so divine That silly youth doth think to make itself Divine by loving, and so goes on Yawning and doting a whole summer long…
To be sure, it is sheer madness… to return to the sites of one’s youth and try to relive at forty what one loved or keenly enjoyed at twenty. But I was forewarned of that madness… I hoped, I think, to recapture there a freedom I could not forget. In that spot, indeed, more than twenty years ago, I had spent whole mornings wandering… I was alive then.
William Strode, “Magazines And Newspapers Litter The Intersection Of Sixth & Broadway…” (1972)
You must tell me something that you are sure is true — I don’t care much what it may be, I will take your word for it. Things get into a muddle with me…
I go on my way to-night, If I can; if not, to-morrow; emigrant train ten to fourteen days’ journey; warranted extreme discomfort… I have been steadily drenched for twenty-four hours; water-proof wet through; immortal spirit fitfully blinking up in spite… I am not beaten yet, though disappointed. If I am, it’s for good this time; you know what “for good” means in my vocabulary— something inside of 12 months perhaps; but who knows? At least, if I fail in my great purpose, I shall see some wild life in the West and visit both Florida and Labrador ere I return. But I don’t yet know if I have the courage to stick to life without it. Man, I was sick, sick, sick of this last year.
—Letter from Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin (on board s.s. “Devonia,” an hour or two out of New York, August, 1879)