June 2011
E.E Cummings
“Speak elm eloquent pandar with thy nod
significant to the ecstatic earth
in token of his coming whom her soul
burns to embrace— and didst thou know the god
from but the imprint of whose cloven feet
the shrieking dryad sought her leafy goal
at the mere echo of whose shining mirth
the furious hearts of mountains ceased to beat?” — extract from the poem, ‘Tulips...
Siberian Elder..
“If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.”
E.E Cummings
Thou aged unreluctant earth who dost
with quivering continual thighs invite
the thrilling rain the slender paramour
to toy with thy extraordinary lust,
(the sinuous rain which rising from thy bed
steals to his wife the sky and hour by hour
wholly renews her pale flesh with delight)
— immortally whence are the high gods fled? —Excerpt from Tulips (Epithalamion)
Rainer Maria Rilke
“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.”
Mervyn Peake, "Titus Groan"
“Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping arch, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the...
Thomas More
“The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don’t want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don’t have a soul.”
E.E Cummings
“Such was a poet and shall be and is -who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam’s architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand.”
