If I love
I will love beyond today--
beyond the sensuous tingling of the body--
beyond the imprisoned slavery of the mind--
I will love freely
as love was meant to be--
like the white wings of a gull
on a journey to the sun--
like the wonder of tomorrow
and the wonder of a thousand tomorrows
with the faith of a thousand yesterdays
which have freed me
to love this way--

--Nan Witcomb

The One Certainty.

Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith,

All things are vanity. The eye and ear

Cannot be filled with what they see and hear.

Like early dew, or like the sudden breath

Of wind, or like the grass that withereth,

Is man, tossed to and fro by hope and fear:

So little joy hath he, so little cheer,

Till all things end in the long dust of death.

To-day is still the same as yesterday,

To-morrow also even as one of them;

And there is nothing new under the sun:

Until the ancient race of Time be run,

The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem,

And morning shall be cold and twilight grey.

--Christina Rossetti

let me count the ways.
I want neither Lethe, nor wolf-bane,
and there are no buds in May.
honesty is lonely if dullness is homely, and
wine is sweeter under the winter sky's carpet of stars.
people will come and speak with us,
strangers, sometimes, meek and mild,
and we will dream of the river dragging silt through time.

and yet.
there is something in it.
beyond the page, something in the cells of our skin,
the narratives of the human,
the poet, the lover, the friend.
the parts we play to keep death entertained and
too busy to lead us astray into the.
what else.
what else is there to do but try.
try with all the might of those who will die.

we danced with the heat of a thousand suns rising

It's as simple and as difficult as giving it everything.

Wake, the parting of water, this design of ripples they are making. This pattern on pattern made in the shock waves of uncompleted mourning.

--Gail Jones, Five Bells

What are words but little islands of lies? Little islands of pretenses and pretends. The coward's retreat, the scholar's beloved contract with passivity. They serve only as the run-up to activity, a preparation or declaration or mitigation of something that remains imaginary until it leads to action. Words, and words alone. More words, and more still. And for what?