Over the past few days Nada Gordon posted the following:

Interesting that Nick and Jean assumed that my "My Dilemma" poem with its constant refrain of "no one loves me" was necessarily a personal expression.

( 7:23 AM )
Before all my friends start sending me emails to cheer me up: I am not sad. NOT sad.

( 7:22 AM ) Nada
If I think about crying I come to the conclusion that it's an attention getting device. I mean it gets MY attention. Yesterday, for instance, I woke up and felt like crying before a thought even entered my head. No memory of what I'd dreamt...


(Aphorisms from "Voices" by Antonio Porchia translated by W.S. Merwin.)

Here's a little bouquet of them for you, Nada:

"We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself."

"More grievous than tears is the sight of them"

"Nothing ends without breaking because everything is endless."

"I have come one step away from everything. And here I stay, far from everything, one step away."

"There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering."

"I have loved for the sake of what I loved, and what I loved I would not go back to loving."

"Only the wound speaks its own word."

"The grieving for everyone and about everything has grown and become a grieving for myself, to myself. And it is still growing."

"I will help you to approach if you approach, and to keep away if you keep away."

"I believe that the soul consists of its sufferings. For the soul that cures its own sufferings dies."

"To wound the heart is to create it."

"Every time I wake I understand how easy is it is to be nothing."

"Among the superficial, if you are not one of them, one of them has to lead you by the hand."

"They are like me, I tell myself. And in that way I defend myself against them. And in that way I defend myself against myself."

"I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it."

"Sometimes I think that evil is everything, and that good is only a beautiful desire for evil."

"My 'I' has gone farther and farther away from me. Today it is my farthest 'you.'"

"Do not speak of your misfortunes harshly to anyone, because everyone is partly to blame."

"I am yesterday, today. And tomorrow? In tomorrow I was."

"I can wait for you no longer. Because you have arrived."