#would-be-everlasting

[luthienne]

“They’ve a saying there for the heartsick. They say: However fair still to look / at, he bears a / thorn in his throat. They believe the throat is a sieve woven of wounds both / incurred and / escaped from. By this logic all speech becomes, unsparingly, remembrance: / we sing, and / we are betrayed.... How much / was true?”

— Carl Phillips, from Pastoral: Poems; “Would-Be-Everlasting”