Nazim Hikmet, A Spring Piece Left in the Middle

"there was no space for a continuous forest, no space for an infinite sea, no matter how endless the search.

and so the invention of your eyes."

Garous Abdolmalekain, Lean Against This Late Hour

"Even after letting go of the last bird, I hesitate. There is something in this empty cage that never gets released."

— Garous Abdolmalekain, Lean Against This Late Hour

Garous Abdolmalekain, Lean Against This Late Hour

“Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.”

— John Banville, The Sea

Garous Abdolmalekain, Lean Against This Late Hour

"Every winter an absent joy pains you. You walk into the rain, a single duo: you and the person you were in another winter."

— Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

"With a massacre or two, the country’s name, our country, became another. Reality became an idea and history became memory. The myth invades and the invasion attributes everything to the will of the Lord who promised and did not renege on his promise.

They wrote their narrative: we have returned. They wrote our narrative: they have returned to the desert. They put us on trial: why were you born here?

We said: why was Adam born in paradise?"

Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

Hieu Minh Nguyen, from “White Boy Time Machine: Instruction Manual”, Not Here

Anthony Cudahy

"how gladly i watched the summer fade, the leaves turn yellow on the trees, and the grass dry out over the wide steppe! summer is gone at last! the winds of autumn howl and groan, the first snow falls in whirling flakes."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, House of the Dead

" ... i remember only too well how very, very slowly these last two years passed, how sadly, and how the days seemed as if they would never fade into evening, like water falling drop by drop. i remember, too, that i was filled with a mighty longing for my resurrection from that grave, a longing which gave me strength to endure, to wait, and to to hope. and so i became hardened and long-suffering ; i lived on expectation, and counted every day as it passed; if there had been a thousand more, i would have found satisfaction in thinking that one of them was gone, only nine hundred and ninety-nine remained."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

— Anne Sexton, Imitations of Drowning

Study of a hand by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805)

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

"It was a bright July night, quiet and warm, the river was wide, mist was rising from its surface to cool us, a fish splashed gently every now and again, the birds had fallen silent, everything was still, serene, in prayer to God."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov