culture

a few nights ago as he was falling asleep
hubbyo told me that he wants to go on a redneck vacation
his request went something like this...
we can shoot guns and eat steak, shakes and budweiser
and chewing tobacco and drive trucks
and get wasted and stay at the madonna inn

love will expand you

but fortunately i still have the stars left

Letter To Youki

My love,

Our suffering would be unbearable if I couldn’t regard it as a passing and sentimental illness. Our reunion will make our life beautiful for at least thirty years. For my part, I’m taking a deep swig of youth, and I will return filled with love and strength. During work a birthday, my birthday was the occasion for a long meditation on you. Will this letter reach you in time for your birthday? I would have liked to give you a hundred thousand American cigarettes, a dozen couture dresses, an apartment on the rue de Seine, an automobile, a little house in the Compiègne forest, the one on Belle Isle and a little four-penny bouquet. In my absence, you can go ahead and buy the flowers. I will repay you for them. The rest I promise you for later.

But before all else, drink a bottle of good wine and think of me. I hope our friends won’t leave you alone on this day. I thank them for their devotion and their courage. I received a package from Jean-Louis Barrault about a week ago. Kiss him on the cheek for me as well as Madeleine Renaud, as the package is a proof that my letter did arrive. I have not received a reply, but I’m waiting for one every day. Kiss the whole family for me, Lucienne, Tante Juliette, Georges. If you meet Passuer’s brother, give him my regards and ask him if he knows anyone who can come and help you. What’s new with my books at the press? I have many ideas for poems and novels. I’m sorry that I have neither the freedom nor the time to write them. You can, however, tell Gallimard that within three months of my return they will receive the manuscript for a love story in an entirely new genre. I am closing for today.

Today, the 15th of July, I receive four letters, from Barrault, Julia, Dr. Benet, and Daniel. Thank them and excuse me for not having replied. I have the right to only one letter a month. Still nothing from your hand, but they do give me news of you; this will be for next time. I hope that this letter is as our life to come. My love, I kiss you as tenderly as honorability permits in a letter which must be passed by the censor. A thousand kisses. And have you received the little hope chest that I sent to the hotel in Compiègne?

Robert

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,
gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)
her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,
i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:
whose texture compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e. cummings

been reading
quite a bit
of e.e. cummings
again.
i can't understate
the influence his
words have had on
my life.

lost