the more loving one

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Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.


–W.H. Auden

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I never died, said he

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an African proverb

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When death finds you, may it find you alive.

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datura

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when i go

Oseberg, a 9th-century burial ship, at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.
Photograph, Kim Walker, Robert Harding/Corbis, datura

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When I go, bury me with nothing but my own skin.
I spent far too many days trying to outrun this thing called mine. 

So if I set myself into your arms would you hold me like the Earth, quietly? 

I am yours. Give me a field, give me a big sky. A mountain.
Give me your mouth. 

I’m just looking for a quiet place that I could die inside of.


—Anis Mojgani

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i see you

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'This is our choral tribute to Lily Allen who wrote this song for her mother, Alison Owen.
Orchestrated and Arranged by Rachel Santesso'

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Farewell

 



 

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If I am dying, leave the balcony open. 
The child is eating an orange. 
(From my balcony, I see him.) 

The reaper is reaping the barley. 
(From my balcony, I hear him.) 

If I am dying, leave the balcony open.


–Federico Garcia Lorca 

 

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trying to find a way to love

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Am I Not Among the Early Risers, excerpt

 

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Here is an amazement -- once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

Above the modest house and the palace -- the same darkness.
Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.
Above the child who will recover and the child who will
not recover, the same energies roll forward,
from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

I bow down.


–Mary Oliver
West Wind

 

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