"She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything."

--

Source : Mark Strand (2012). “Almost Invisible: Poems”, p.38, Knopf

Mark Strand

#Years Quotes #Afterlife Quotes #Tree Quotes

“The ability to play is essential to being a creative artist.”
“Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.”
“If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.”
“The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.”
“Culture is sustained in our synapses...It's more than what can be reduced to binary code and uploaded onto the Net. To remain vital, culture must be renewed in the minds of the members of every generation. Outsource memory, and culture withers.”
“I'm trying..." How could I put it? "I'm trying to get far enough down the line so that I can remember." I stopped, then continued: "so that I can remember without the pain killing me" And the days were stacking up. And weeks. And months. It was now almost the middle of June and he'd died in February, but I still felt like I'd just woken from a horrible dream, that I was suspended in that stunned, paralyzed state between sleep and reality where I was grasping for, but couldn't get a handle on normality.”
“Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything.”
“We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.”

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