I Wish I Had Something Else. A Redemptive Imagination

and the moon is the mouth of a lover

Garous Abdolmalekian, Acquiescence tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

Death wanted to be this beautiful but we buried it

Garous Abdolmalekian, Sea tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

He lives in a small country of hope which is his heart.

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

And of course there was music, though it was me and my incessant remembering.

Ada Limón, Banished Wonders

“You / bring out the sea in me, so wade. / Wade in this.”

— Jasmine Reid, from “Instructions for the Moon,” Deus Ex Nigrum

For his conversations about action (we have had more than one) are all descriptions of God

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

there is also the waiting, the kind which has survived hundreds of tides and ebbs of hours...Take them along with my body.

Marzena Broda, [Come back to me...] tr. Regina Grol

Fifty Days at Iliam: The Fire The Consumes All Before It

Cy Twombly, 1978

Oil, oil crayon, and graphite on canvas

Photo taken from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

and how it's hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.

Ada Limón, Mowing

Not to act in this tragedy, but to live

Alicja Rybałko, Curriculum Vitae tr. Regina Grol