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Quote by Tracy K. Smith

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Duende

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Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is an American poet known for her profound poetry that often explores themes of race, identity, and human experience. Born on April 16, 1972, Smith graduated from Harvard University and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. Her poetry collection 'Life on Mars' won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2011. more

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“The looks, the heat Every smile, so sour, so sweet. All I had known was that you made me complete. Everything I needed, I never wanted more, Yet every time I was run down straight to the core. Every kiss, every step, every dance on the floor, Everything was nothing. When you left me...out that door. Our life, our plans, our future, in your hands. Like a stab or a wound. I'll get better...if I can. I know it's not the same, forever is the blame. I tried so hard, for one who wanted more, for someone's heart Who won't be allowed to be tamed. It was the best, a love, never small but when one Leaves the other, the rest will fall. Let the tears drop. Let the feelings fly. Because at least not in public, I will not cry. My heart still beats, locked in your chest. It's pitiful, sad, but I love you, dear traitor. If you can stay, you can trample my heart, but don't ever go away But if not, you're gone, I don't expect less But if it's true just lay with me and rest Help me rebuild me Out of whatever's left.”

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“Coming home is terrible whether the dogs lick your face or not; whether you have a wife or just a wife-shaped loneliness waiting for you. Coming home is terribly lonely, so that you think of the oppressive barometric pressure back where you have just come from with fondness, because everything's worse once you're home. You think of the vermin clinging to the grass stalks, long hours on the road, roadside assistance and ice creams, and the peculiar shapes of certain clouds and silences with longing because you did not want to return. Coming home is just awful. And the home-style silences and clouds contribute to nothing but the general malaise. Clouds, such as they are, are in fact suspect, and made from a different material than those you left behind. You yourself were cut from a different cloudy cloth, returned, remaindered, ill-met by moonlight, unhappy to be back, slack in all the wrong spots, seamy suit of clothes dishrag-ratty, worn. You return home moon-landed, foreign; the Earth's gravitational pull an effort now redoubled, dragging your shoelaces loose and your shoulders etching deeper the stanza of worry on your forehead. You return home deepened, a parched well linked to tomorrow by a frail strand of… Anyway . . . You sigh into the onslaught of identical days. One might as well, at a time . . . Well . . . Anyway . . . You're back. The sun goes up and down like a tired whore, the weather immobile like a broken limb while you just keep getting older. Nothing moves but the shifting tides of salt in your body. Your vision blears. You carry your weather with you, the big blue whale, a skeletal darkness. You come back with X-ray vision. Your eyes have become a hunger. You come home with your mutant gifts to a house of bone. Everything you see now, all of it: bone." A poem by - Eva H.D.”

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Author:Eva H.D.
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“Nine Negro boys in Alabama were on trial for their lives when I got back from Cuba and Haiti. The famous Scottsboro "rape" case was in full session. I visited those boys in the death house at Kilby Prison, and I wrote many poems about them. One of those poems was: CHRIST IN ALABAMA Christ is a Nigger, Beaten and black-- O, bare your back. Mary is His Mother-- Mammy of the South, Silence your mouth. God's His Father-- White Master above, Grant us your love. Most holy bastard Of the bleeding mouth: Nigger Christ On the cross of the South.”

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“We are frightfully concerned with our own deaths, sometimes so much so that we forget the real purpose of our lives”

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Book:Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
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