Remembering Silence

Lucy Campbell

I don’t remember

lighting this cigarette

and I don’t remember

if I’m here alone

or waiting for someone.

— Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

*

For billions of years, in fact, from the birth of time, the black hole at the center of every galaxy, the gravity of each gazing star, every hydrocarbon and chloroplast, each photon of sunlight or proton of breath, and even shy colors like celadon and sage in the meadow, have conspired to guide my atoms to this moment, when I have no choice but to fall on my knees in the moss, to spread toward wind and sky my arms, useless as wings though they be, and right here confess: “I don’t know what the fuck is going on!”

~ Fred LaMotte

*

“I wanted the cities to be beautiful, full of light, irrigated with clear water, populated by human beings whose bodies were not disturbed by the mark of misery or slavery, nor by the bloat of vulgar wealth; that the students recite with a well-tuned voice lessons, that the women at the hearth they had in their gestures a kind of maternal dignity, a powerful calmness; that the gymnasiums were attended by young people not unaware of games or arts; that the orchards produced the most beautiful fruit, the fields the most…