the world so fragile so resilient embracing tight
its spinning delusions, inequalities, contradictions
while he is smiling at his fists, the most powerful
a mascarade game we play with reality
impossible to tolerate the contact with daylight
democracy no longer soothes us when it lies to us
political agency crushed in empty pockets
eyes full of a radical hope
the truth obscured in our mythical mind

we need to be brutally honest with our mental health
with the health of the oceans, of the air, of our dreams
he is a fragment tormenting our fragments while
the world is not yet prepared to grieve its disneyland

an escapable paradox will hold us
oh, how are we falling when we think we are rising

the future is unstoppable
its echo chambers are searching
for some truth

You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.

Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

by Erica Jong

nights revolve in imaginary loops
I am captive inside my lips, inside fingertips
so that I see everything half and half
waves, tears, apples, words
half for me, half for not me, but the other you
I have to keep my hands for myself cause
you have sunshine tattooed on your skin
words are this space where I can breathe
when your hands get concentric

Modern capitalist society, in order to culturally and structurally reproduce itself, to mantain its formative status quo, must forever be expanding, growing and innovating, increasing production and consumption as well as options and opportunities for connection -in short it must always be dynamically accelerating.  This systematic tendency toward escalation changes how people are situated in the world, the ways in which human beings relate to the world. Dynamization in this sense means a fundamental transformation of our relationship to time and space, to other people, to the objects around us, and ultimately to ourselves, to our body and our mental dispositions.
This is the point at which acceleration becomes a problem. An aimless, endless compulsion toward escalation ultimately leads to problematic, even dysfunctional or pathological relationships to the world on the part of both subjects and society as a whole. This dysfunction can be observed in the three great crises of the present day: the enviromental crisis, the crisis of democracy, and the psychological crisis (as manifested, for example in ever-growing rates of burnout).

Hartmut Rosa, from Resonance A sociology of our relationship to the world

and it was dark inside the wolf or so she said, Margaret. it haunted me gently. the blazing light was feeding on darkness, as always. we were only creatures made of words that come and go leaving behind their trace of mistery. we need something to believe in cause we need something to trust. where to find it? let's believe in pain and in the art of letting go, I wanted to shout. pain  mixed with fear, a hiding pain, a pain from which I wanted to hide, a punishing pain, a muted scream, a helplessness, a circus, a charade, a make believe. what if we were fools, we were empty because of being too full. where is the group, the vitality of our communities. children don't have a sense of future, only the infinite present for not feeling like a human. let's not pretend, let's not fool the world with our orderly words

I was so very aware
that the afternoon was dying in the domes,
and all around me sounds froze,
turned to winding pillars.

I was so very aware
that the undulant drift of scents
was collapsing into darkness,
and it seemed I had never tasted
the cold.

Suddenly
I awoke so far away
and strange,
wandering behind my face
as though I had hidden my feelings
in the senseless relief of the moon.

I was so very aware
that
I did not recognize you, and perhaps
you come, always,
every hour, every second,
moving through my vigil - then -
as through the spectre of a triumphal arch.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

the impossible depth of solitude
with its amber tone
vitality  and some ambiguous  words
like the scent of a blooming field
in forgotten summers
and my wish to be his toy
in the machinery of dreams
he had canons of magic in his fingers
and a slippery mind
that went from one orbit to another
till the light was decoloured
devoured
into the music of
an agonizing time
or prayer

Steeped in history, building a shadowy bouquet,
Unable to reassemble ourselves as grapes,
We are wound into a richness we cannot undo.
Beautiful still, and with a destiny that is vaguely related to vines—
We still know water and wind.
We know the stories of the keepers of the casks,
We know versions of civilizations that sing.
There is goodness.
A look to a future of solutions is a potion table of bubbling mysteries,
Soaked in folded learnings, lost threads, unseen outcomes.
We are not
And yet
We are grapes always

by Nora Bateson

The way the trees empty themselves of leaves,
let drop their ponderous fruit,
the way the turtle abandons the sun-warmed log,
the way even the late-blooming aster
succumbs to the power of frost -

this is not a new story.
Still, on this morning, the hollowness
of the season startles, filling
the rooms of your house, filling the world
with impossible light, improbable hope.

And so, what else can you do
but let yourself be broken
and emptied? What else is there
but waiting in the autumn sun?

Carolyn Locke, from Poetry of Presence An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems

Little by little she became a word,
bundles of soul on the wind,
a dolphin in the clutches of my eyebrows,
a stone provoking rings in water,
a star inside my knee,
a sky inside my shoulder,
and I inside I.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to brake into blossom

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.

by Lisel Mueller

I dreamed we were sailing through rice fields
(they make paper out of rice),
Along a wet brilliance, along mirrors,
Along a marshy archipelago.
In a paper boat, a pale boat,
No splashing could be heard, the oars were so light,
In the mist the boat gets wet, is sinking.
And tiny lights will appear soon.
The shoots of rice, standing out of the water,
Look askance with their Korean eyes - so that
I should understand - an object of love be thou -
They are. A candelabrum of love branches out.
With an ***** song, like a pipe inside a pipe,
(It's natural to love  everyone and immediately too),
Look: memory of oneself is going away
To the bottom like a clumsy dead diver.
Look: the lights are spinning round like rain,
Not falling to the earth - these are souls
Whose inconsolable love
For the Creation and the Creator, the soul will not extinguish.
Oh, how long ago I knew all this -
When I was still a two-legged woman
And now I'm drowning, now I'm lying on the bottom
Of love, like a million-armed octopus.

On the shallow bottom, in the rice fields,
Belonging to earth, water and sky,
With a living longing - and sweet fear -
Those will fall in love with me who think 'I was not there'.

by Elena Shvarts from Contemporary Russian Poetry
translated by Gerald S. Smith

Because nobody cares
About anybody.
It's got dull, cold, and bare
Like in a movie house where the movie's over.

Where are the girlfriends, kind as fairies,
The friends who come in a hurry when you call?
None of them gives a hoot or a cuss,
You can't even weep.

Life's been orphaned and grown thin,
Frozen to death like the village movie house,
Because nobody cares
About anybody.

1990

by Vladimir Kornilov from Contemporary Russian Poetry,
translated by Gerald S. Smith