two hundred & fifty one

Dark Wood, Dark Water

This wood burns a dark
Incense. Pale moss drips
In elbow-scarves, beards

From the archaic
Bones of the great trees.
Blue mists move over

A lake thick with fish.
Snails scroll the border
Of the glazed water

With coils of ram's-horn.
Out in the open
Down there the late year

Hammers her rare and
Various metals.
Old pewter roots twist

Up from the jet-backed
Mirror of water
And while the air's clear

Hourglass sifts a
Drift of goldpieces
Bright waterlights are

Sliding their quoits one
After the other
Down boles of the fir. 

Sylvia Plath (27 October 1932 - 11 February 1963)

two hundred & fifty

… sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. … Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said: ‘Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity’.  … The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me. *

* Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde  (16 October 1854 to 30 November 1900)

two hundred & forty nine

For me, music is a study of my own self and of the human spirit. I’ve always believed music to be very deep, or at least it can be very deep. It’s like a liquid that can go into the depths, spread out in all directions, and take on various shapes. ... Music often speaks much more directly, both to the heart and mind. ... Feelings and sensations are immediate. *

*Kaija Anneli Saariaho (14 October 1952 - )

two hundred & forty eight

I am happy living simply: like a clock, or a calendar. … Thinking of something, carelessly, … Step by step, poppy by poppy, I behead the flowers *

* Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (Мари́на Ива́новна Цвета́ева) (8 October 1892 - 31 August 1941)