Naomi Replansky Quotes

I must learn again to give it welcome.

When there was one kiss/against ten curses/and one loaf/against ten hungry/and one hello/against ten goodbyes/the odds stalked/your crooked steps.

they swarmed everywhere,/the unwritten poems.

I learned the speech of birds; now every tree/Screams out to me a baleful prophecy.

I was, I did, but I will let it be./Tonight I must hold dear/Whatever brought me here.

Neither destroyed nor diamond/I walk from the core of your flame,/The rain does not hiss when it hits me,/And I answer to my old name.

Hungry, not one word here/is as good as bread.

His praise like rain runs down the gutters

No god came down, my brothers,/To breathe on them, my sisters./Their bodies made a mountain/That never touched the heavens./Whose lightning struck the killers?/Whose rain drowned out the fires?/My brothers and my sisters,/No angel leaned upon them./No miracle could shield them/From the cold human hands.

Tomorrow we cross/The borders of loss

They went hunting lions/But a flea attacked them/And their hunters' passion/Narrowed to a flea.

My spoon was lifted when the bomb came down/That left no face, no hand, no spoon to hold./A hundred thousand died in my home town./This came to pass before my soup was cold. ("Epitaph: 1945")

All, all runs wild, all wild and uncontrolled./A toad hops from my mouth instead of gold.

My words may turn into stones/as easily as a man/turned one day into silence.

In silence is the smell of treachery, and sanction/Of hunger, and therefore I shout./But in the storm of sound I clothe myself/In a hush like fur.