In Passing How swiftly... ...as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious - Lisel Mueller

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In Passing
How swiftly...
...as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious

English
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About Lisel Mueller

(born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. Her family fled the Nazi regime, and she arrived in the U.S. in 1939 at the age of 15. She worked as a literary critic and taught at the , Elmhurst College and . She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study. She received awards including the in 1981 and the for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.

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Additional quotes by Lisel Mueller

Alive Together
Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you...
I might have been...
a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
...I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. ...
...I might have been you.
...The odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists with square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who—but for endless ifs—
might have missed out...

The Blind Leading the Blind
Take my hand. There are two of us in this cave.
The sound you hear is water; you will hear it forever.
...You will learn toads from diamonds, the fist from the palm,
love from the sweat of love, falling from flying.
...Once I fell off a precipice. Once I found gold.
...There are two of us here. Touch me.

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Why I Need the Birds
...By the time I arrive at evening,
...they are turning
into the dreamwork of trees;
and all of us...
myself and the purple finches,
and rusty blackbirds,
the ruby cardinals,
the white-throated sparrows
with their liquid voices—
ride the dark curve of the earth
toward daylight, which they announce
from their high lookouts
before dawn has quite broken...

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