Transactions with Beauty

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Who By Fire

Maybe it’s the time of year to ask how your life is burning….to return to the fire, to examine the ash.

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Leonard Cohen

Who by fire?

Relentlessly Craving

by Julia Fiedorczuk

poem, poem be strong
like a shock wave, Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor
put down roots, find the source, bloom, bear fruit
come to life, poem, I need your blood

poem, poem be as perilously lovely
as the drunken woman in the painting by Munch
what counts are only the base colors, yellow, black, red
what counts is fire

there is a time for hope
and a time for despair

what counts is fire
if you have no flesh
you do not know love
nor do you know death

poem, poem be in the sun
in the eye of the world
in the turning of bread into motion
in the constant decay that is the condition of all synthesis
in the blood

fire, be

there is a time for hope
and a time for despair
what counts is fire and ice

poem, poem be like the dark night of the soul

Translations from the PolishBy Bill Johnston


{source: World Literature Today}

Who gets up early to discover

the moment the light begins?
What was whispered to the rose

to break it open last night
was whispered to my heart.

You’ve gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine.
Taste this. It won’t make you wild.

It’s fire.
Give up, if you don’t understand by this time that your living is firewood.

Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames.

The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
To change, a person must face the dragon of his appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of the soul.

-– Rumi

“I want more of this feeling – fire and wings.”

― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

All I know is that I want more of this feeling….

July 29, 2019