Things I Didn't Know I Loved // Nazim Hikmet

it’s 1962 March 28th I’m sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train night is falling I never knew I liked night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain I don’t like comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn’t know I loved the earth can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it I’ve never worked the earth it must be my only Platonic love

and here I’ve loved rivers all this time whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills European hills crowned with chateaus or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see I know you can’t wash in the same river even once I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow I know this has troubled people before                          and will trouble those after me I know all this has been said a thousand times before                          and will be said after me

I didn’t know I loved the sky cloudy or clear the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish I hear voices not from the blue vault but from the yard the guards are beating someone again I didn’t know I loved trees bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino they come upon me in winter noble and modest beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish “the poplars of Izmir losing their leaves. . . they call me The Knife. . .                          lover like a young tree. . . I blow stately mansions sky-high” in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief                                         to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads even the asphalt kind Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea                                                           Koktebele                                formerly “Goktepé ili” in Turkish the two of us inside a closed box the world flows past on both sides distant and mute I was never so close to anyone in my life bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé                                         when I was eighteen apart from my life I didn’t have anything in the wagon they could take and at eighteen our lives are what we value least I’ve written this somewhere before wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play Ramazan night a paper lantern leading the way maybe nothing like this ever happened maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy                                        going to the shadow play Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather’s hand    his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat       with a sable collar over his robe    and there’s a lantern in the servant’s hand    and I can’t contain myself for joy flowers come to mind for some reason poppies cactuses jonquils in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika fresh almonds on her breath I was seventeen my heart on a swing touched the sky I didn’t know I loved flowers friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars I love them too whether I’m floored watching them from below or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts were the stars much bigger did they look like huge jewels on black velvet                              or apricots on orange did you feel proud to get closer to the stars I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don’t    be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract    well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to    say they were terribly figurative and concrete my heart was in my mouth looking at them they are our endless desire to grasp things seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind I didn’t know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun even when setting cherry-red as now in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors but you aren’t about to paint it that way I didn’t know I loved the sea                              except the Sea of Azov or how much

I didn’t know I loved clouds whether I’m under or up above them whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois strikes me I like it

I didn’t know I liked rain whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my    heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop    and takes off for uncharted countries I didn’t know I loved    rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting    by the window on the Prague-Berlin train is it because I lit my sixth cigarette one alone could kill me is it because I’m half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night I never knew I liked the night pitch-black sparks fly from the engine I didn’t know I loved sparks I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty    to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train    watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

                                                     19 April 1962                                                      Moscow

still sad that the ada limón poem sent by nasa wasn’t dead stars. like imagine the poem sent to space being one that says “look, we are not unspectacular things. we’ve come this far, survived this much. what would happen if we decided to survive more? to love harder?” wouldn’t that have been the most human thing in the world?

NaPoWriMo #5: A poem inspired by a specific public-domain nature book

In this case, the section about the infinite variety of microorganisms.

Song of the Microorganisms

Praise the Lord, all you single-celled creatures! You bacteria and algae You diatoms and fungi Praise Him who brings you sun and sugars to feast upon Who makes waters and thermal vents for your homes He whose majesty is infinite Crafts and cares for creatures infinitely small Ever-generating life, the unseen throng Praise Him in endless, invisible song

☀️✨Praise Apollo ✨🌻🌞🏹🎼🎶🎵

For the music in our hearts,

the sun on our skin

and art for our souls.

A Full Plankton Moon: What glows in the night? This night featured a combination of usual and unusual glows. Perhaps the most usual glow was from the Moon, a potentially familiar object. The full Moon's nearly vertical descent results from the observer being near Earth's equator. As the Moon sets, air and aerosols in Earth's atmosphere preferentially scatter out blue light, making the Sun-reflecting satellite appear reddish when near the horizon. Perhaps the most unusual glow was from the bioluminescent plankton, likely less familiar objects. These microscopic creatures glow blue, it is thought, primarily to surprise and deter predators. In this case, the glow was caused primarily by plankton-containing waves crashing onto the beach. The image was taken on Soneva Fushi Island, Maldives just over one year ago. Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava Explanation 

[Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

“Those roads were echoes and footsteps, women, men, agonies, resurrections, days and nights, half dreams and dreams, every obscure instant of yesterday and of the world’s yesterdays, the firm sword of the Dane and the moon of the Persian, the deeds of the dead, shared love, words, Emerson and snow and so many things. Now I can forget them. I reach my center, my algebra and my key, my mirror. Soon I will know who I am.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, In praise of shadow

[alive on all channels]

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa by Ada Limón [Text ID in ALT text]

On June 1, 2023, Limón debuted “In Praise of Mystery” to kick off the NASA “Message in a Bottle” campaign, which invites people around the world to sign their names to the poem. The poem will be engraved on the Clipper, along with participants’ names that will be etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and participant’s names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system.

Wisława Szymborska (tr. Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire)

praise of tenderness [sad words for kxxxxx ❤] ph. and words by víctor m. alonso

[I am trapped in the spider web of your silence; a maritime fabric, a nocturnal labyrinth, an unknown sea. I only dream waves of silence, slow waves, stopped in the time of your eyes, drifting from the cosmic space of feeling;]

Trying not to fall // Bryce Milligan

    for Joy Harjo

    There is a woman with a saxophone     blowing the blues out of time     raising tones like thunderheads     and tones like lightning,     tones like the gray mist     rising on an Oklahoma river.

    There is a woman with a saxophone,     golden horn handed down     one prophet to another     one shaman to the next     beginning as a scrannel flute     golden reed from the Chattahoochee     drawn at dawn and cured inside     a medicine bundle somewhere     in America, somewhere     in time     flint carved its first song,     the song of awakening     after long sleep, after death.

    There is a woman with a saxophone     breathing in the same air     drawn through the sacred stem     when no white hand had laid claim     or shed blood anywhere     in America.     There is a woman with a saxophone,     woman of wind and water     blowing the blues out of time     woman with hair like the raven     that hangs in the sky calling the future     as he sees it, hair blue     blue as blackbird wings in sunshine     with eyes like black holes     in time, ends and beginnings     quick as grace notes.

    There is a woman with a saxophone     on the banks of the Muscogee     rising into the cloud of her music     rising like sacred smoke     rising like stomp dance bonfire flames     rising like warriors bound     for the long paths of the milky way.     There is a woman with a saxophone     trying     not to fall.

I am in a mood. I want nothing more than to kiss Op all over his face and tell him how handsome he is.

(That's a Mood, anon. Here we go with TFP Optimus because that mech really needs some soft moments that won't kill him.)

This is a rare moment of privacy between you and Optimus. Something precious as everything seems to be in order long enough for him to step away for a break, and made far more dear with the clear night of constellations hanging above and no other humans for miles and miles. Whole areas are blocked out due to massive mudslides and the subsequent damage to popular trails. An easy fix to get around with the ground-bridge and a being that's nearly 30-feet tall to step around most obstacles.

Optimus has a fondness for nature, particularly for the deeper wilds that are relatively untouched by the modern day. There's something wistful and nostalgic in his expression as he gazes out.

And right now, you're straddling him. Optimus is mass-displaced, putting his height and frame in a more human-friendly size. Still large, but far more manageable to reach.

You lick your lips and his gaze flickers down for a moment, and your mouth dries out a little more at that subtle tell. "So anything I want, Big Guy?"

"Yes. Anything." He says with that gentle self-deprecating ghost of a smile as his servos curled over your waist, digits resting on the hem of your shirt.

He still feels guilty that there's only so many places you and he can go. Between his obvious paint-job and the tumultuous levels of Energon production at the base, it's better to cautious with his holomatter usage.

"Okay. Close your optics," you command and he obeys.

"You," you say clearly, "are wonderful." You press a firm kiss to the base of the decorative grill piece.

Those 'brows lift, startled but then his face smoothes out, optics clicking but still shut-closed, mouth parts slightly. His fingers curl across some bare skin, but he remains under you.

"Strong." You press a feather-light kiss over his left optic.

"Attentive." You do the same to the right one.

"Absolutely gorgeous." You kiss the subtle hint of a nose-bridge and he makes a noise, engines thrumming as you linger over his mouth but you go to his chin instead, lips brushing over the protective gear. "Stupidly brave."

"And yet you still have kindness in you after everything." You press your lips over his cheeks, feeling the slots of his mask on both sides.

"That was two," he murmurs and a far happier smile graces his own lips.

"A freebie," you quip as you steel yourself for this one.

You don't have his easy way with words or that innate sense of poetry, but this had been mulling in your thoughts for a long while and you might as well spit it out before you lose your nerve. You cradle his face in your hands and press your forehead to his. Optimus has to hunch down to meet you as you stretch up. "If you are the ocean and I am the lighthouse, then I hope I shined enough light to guide you through some terrible storms."

There's the immediate prickling of intent upon your skin, leaving goosebumps and shivers, and your throat catches as he pulls you close and rasps out, "You've been holding out on me."

Your tongue fails to language properly, so you meet his mouth with your own and Optimus falls back and you follow.

You ever read your own writing and just go “yeah, that’s the shit. i love this so much”

Substance, Shadow, and Spirit [remixed, abridged] by Tao Yuanming

I fucking love the desert I haven't been there in years but between constant danger days thoughts and falling in love with it back when I've visited family there i can just zone out and feel like im standing there im so fucking like spiritually connected to it.

I think that Rosie and Alastor would like letters a lot! Whether love or another sort it feels accurate to their time period <3