Author: Justin

Books, Quotes

Outline

by JustinLeave a Comment on Outline

A long time ago – so long that he had forgotten the author’s name – he read some memorable lines in a story about a man who is trying to ­translate another story, by a much more famous author. In these lines – which, my neighbour said, he still remembers to this day – the translator says that a ­sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to ­establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. Those lines concerned the art of writing, but looking around himself in early middle-age my neighbour began to see that they applied just as much to the art of living. Everywhere he looked he saw people as it were ruined by the extremity of their own experiences

– from, Outline by Rachel Cusk

Love, Poetry

The Durable Fire

by JustinLeave a Comment on The Durable Fire

Despite the shit we put each other through –
and even though the trap of your teeth
snapped at my throat as the withering flash
of your anger fired and fell again
and again and I bent my head down beneath
that bitter rain – still I felt
the days that lengthened with you more precisely
themselves than I had ever imagined.
Through the deep rage that distorted our bodies;
through hurt, betrayal, the difficult truths
in search of some myth that might prove more
durable to our selves than each other –
still you step to this page’s bare panopticon,
belovèd, contemptuous of ruin.

Love, Poetry

The Willow Bends

by JustinLeave a Comment on The Willow Bends

So long the dragonfly has risen from its deep,
the mouse from its labour, the vole from its sleep,
the girl from her texting, the worm from its sheep,
the king from his castle and the castle from its keep,

And I know what news you are bearing,
your sob at my ear wearing
the shape of her body in the earth’s cold springs –
but even there I hear a broken voice, singing