You'll Get Over It

Poetry makes you feel better.
It does not make you happy
when you are sad. It makes
your sadness more precise.

"A pure heart wants one thing." (Søren Kierkegaard)

Philosophy cannot change
how things are done.

No poem can fix
                    how people see.

The peculiar affectation of philosophers
that existence is a mystery.

The strange conceit of poets
that inspiration is an authority.

My perverse obsession
                                      with their likeness.

Do you want their praise?

People are mostly decent.
That's how institutions work.
We're honest about most things—
how we deal with intuitions.

Education is not a preparation for life.
It is a precision in our suffering.

The crime that you confess is not the actual crime.
The sins you are forgiven are not what you have done.

Incipit Vita Nova

She was "the blessed one," though few understood the meaning of her name. Blessed, too, was he to experience this woman, if only twice, some nine years apart, in his "old life," but perfectly.

God bless the troubadour, free spirit of romance, who teaches us to appreciate an inaccessible beauty, to value pleasures from which we are barred, by circumstance or disposition, and accept a deeper longing for the other, a firmer hold upon our ourselves, not merely as recompense for our suffering, but as the very revelation of our capacity to love.

Solace

I've been wrong about everything so far.
I may well be wrong about the rest.