Rumi

Sometimes I forget completely

what companionship is.

Unconscious and insane,

I spill sad energy everywhere.

My story gets told in various ways:

a romance,a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.
Divide up my forgetfulness to any number,

it will go around

These dark suggestions that I follow,

are they part of some plan?

Friends, be careful.

Don't come near me

out of curiosity, or sympathy.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Narcissus.

Your fragrance.

And the depth of the stream.
I would remain at your verge.

Flower of love.

Narcissus.
Over your white eyes flicker

shadows and sleeping fish.

Birds and butterflies

lacquer mine.
You so minute and I so tall.

Flower of love.

Narcissus.
How active the frogs are!

They will not leave alone

the glass which mirrors

your delirium and mine.

Narcissus.

My sorrow.

And my sorrow's self.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Out of infinite longings rise

finite deeds like weak fountains,

falling back just in time and trembling.

And yet, what otherwise remains silent,

our happy energies—show themselves

in these dancing tears.

Robert Graves

He is quick, thinking in clear images;

I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;

I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;

Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;

Questioning their relevance, I question their fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;

when the fact fails me, I approve my senses.
He continues quick and dull in his clear images;

I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding;

I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Zbigniew Herbert

Sometimes Mr Cogito recalls, not without emotion, his youthful attempts at perfection, those juvenile per aspera ad astra. One day a small pebble happened to fall inside his shoe as he was hurrying to classes. It maliciously worked its way between raw flesh and his sock. Common sense suggested that he get rid of the intruder, but the principle of amor fati demanded on the contrary that he endure it. He chose the second, heroic solution.
In the beginning it didn’t seem dangerous, a nuisance and nothing more. But after a while the heel appeared in his field of consciousness—it was at the moment when the young Cogito was trying to grasp with great effort what the professor was saying about Plato’s concept of ideas. The heel grew, swelled, pulsated, from pale pink it became scarlet red like a setting sun, and pushed out of his head not only Plato’s idea but all other ideas as well.
In the evening before going to bed he emptied the foreign body from his sock. It was a small, cold, yellow grain of sand. The heel on the contrary was large, burning, and dark with pain.

Zbigniew Herbert: “Mr Cogito and the Pearl”

Ezra Pound

I can not bow to woo thee

With honey words and flower kisses

And the dew of sweet half-truths

Fallen on the grass of old quaint love-tales

Of broidered days foredone.

Nor in the murmurous twilight

May I sit below thee,

Worshiping in whispers

Tremulous as far-heard bells.

All these things have I known once

And passed

In that gay youth I had but yester-year.

And that is gone

As the shadow of wind.

Nay, I can not woo thee thus;

But as I am ever swept upward

To the centre of all truth

So must I bear thee with me

Rapt into this great involving flame,

Calling ever from the midst thereof,

"Follow! Follow!"

And in the glory of our meeting

Shall the power be reborn.

And together in the midst of this power

Must we, each outstriving each,

Cry eternally:

"I come, go thou yet further."

And again, "Follow,"

For we may not tarry.

Paul Verlaine

Come, my poor heart, come, old friend true and tried,

Repaint your triumph's arches, raised anew;

Smoke tinsel altars with stale incense; strew

Flowers before the chasm, gaping wide;

Come, my poor heart, come, old friend true and tried.
Cantor revivified, sing God your hymn;

Hoarse organ-pipes, intone Te Deums proud;

Make up your aging face, youth wrinkle-browed;

Bedeck yourself in gold, wall yellow-dim;

Cantor revivified, sing God your hymn.
Ring, bells; peal, chimes; peal, ring, bells large and small!

My hopeless dream takes shape: for Happiness-

-Here, now--lies clutched, embraced in my caress;

Winged Voyager, who shuns Man's every call;-

-Ring, bells; peal, chimes; peal, ring, bells large and small!
Happiness once walked side by side with me;

But DOOM knows no reprieve, there's no mistaking:

The worm is in the fruit; in dreaming, waking;

In loving, mourning. And so must it be.-

-Happiness once walked side by side with me.