#witter bynner

[entropyarchive]

heated rivalry x mirrors ☼ ft. James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room || Eduardo C. Corral, "Córdoba" || Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous || sam sax, "Gambling Myths" || Hieu Minh Nguyen, "Elegy for the First" || Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias" || Richard Siken, "Unfinished Duet" || Saeed Jones, "A Spell to Banish Grief" || Tommy Pico, Junk || Rick Barot, "The Verge" || Witter Bynner, "Beyond a Mountain"

[bluewillowmoon]

“There is a solitude in seeing you, Followed by your company when you are gone. You are like heaven’s veins of lightning. I cannot see til afterward How beautiful you are. There is a blindness in seeing you, Followed by the sight of you when you are gone.”

— Witter Bynner, “Lightning,” The Beloved Stranger: Two Books of Song and the Divertisement for the Unknown Lover (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919)

[lillyli-74]

There’s a solitude in seeing you.

~Witter Bynner

[megairea]

— Witter Bynner, Touch; The Beloved Stranger, 1919

[newsmutproject]

At the touch of you, As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow, The arrows of delight shot through my body.

You were spring, And I the edge of a cliff, And a shining waterfall rushed over me.

- Witter Bynner

[sashayed]

Horses

Words are hoops Through which to leap upon meanings, Which are horses’ backs, Bare, moving.

Witter Bynner (1881-1968) 1919

[poem-today]

A poem by Witter Bynner

The Robin

Except within poetic pale    I have not found a nightingale, Nor hearkened in a dusky vale    To song and silence blending; No stock-dove have I ever heard, Nor listened to a cuckoo-bird,    Nor seen a lark ascending. But I have felt a pulse-beat start    Because a robin, spending The utmost of his simple art Some of his pleasure to impart    While twilight came descending, Has found an answer in my heart,    A sudden comprehending. 

Witter Bynner

1881-1968

[volunteerismandanarchy]

When people lost sight of the way to live came codes of love and honesty, Learning came, charity came, Hypocrisy took charge; When  differences weakened family ties Came benevolent fathers and dutiful sons; And when lands were disrupted and misgoverned came ministers commended as loyal.

The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu (An American Version)

Translated by Witter Bynner