All I Can Tell You Now

Don't Ask Me

Don't ask me for words that might
define our formless soul, publish it
in letters of fire, and set it shining,
lost crocus in a dusty field.

Ah, that man so confidently striding,
friend to others and himself, careless
that the dog days' sun might stamp
his shadow on a crumbling wall!

Don't ask me for formulas to open worlds
for you: all I have are gnarled syllables,
branch-dry. All I can tell you now is this:
what we are not, what we do not want. 

--Eugenio Montale, translated by William Arrowsmith
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Poetry of Departures

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
Its specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.

But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:

Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

--Philip Larkin 

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Everyone wants to escape to the hills and leave behind the swarming  
cities, which are disease and crime. Clearly, this is just as crazy as 
everyone wanting to leave the hills and rush to the cities to get jobs. 
It’s as though people are always uneasy in the place where they are and
think that the extreme alternative will provide the solutions. But we
know that there aren’t any. 

--Jeanette Winterson, Paris Review Interview