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And now, if you make a Tanagra vase of us, set us all on the upper brow, or all in the chest. To the Children A er many years, when I am a little mound of silent dust, play with me, with the clay of my heart and of my bones. If they make me a brick in a prison, I will blush with shame to hear a man sobbing. I would rather be the dust you play with in the paths of the countryside.

I have been yours. Destroy me, for I made you. Step on me, because I did not give you all truth and all beauty. When you make any image with me, shatter it instantly: The Enemy I dreamed that I was already earth, that I was a meter of dark earth at the side of a road. When the carts loaded with hay passed by at dusk, the scent they le in the air made me tremble to remember the land where I was born; later, when the group of harvesters passed by, it was evoked again.

At the calling of the twilight bells, my soul remembered God, under its blind dust. But now I am darkened dust, and I love even the thistles that grow above me and the wheels of the carts that bruise me as they pass. No acid, no man-made chemical, could have separated us. It was a simple vessel, with no decoration, no etching, nothing to separate us. And if the very soul of Cain could have been dipped in that vessel, that soul would have risen from it like a honeycomb, dripping with honey. The Amphoras You have already found the red and black silted clay by the river.

It will not be troubled by elegance, but will be the Amphora of Health. Make the amphora of the sensualist. Make the amphora of the mournful. Make it simple as a tear, no frieze, no colored decoration, because the owner will not look at its beauty. Make the amphora of the wretched: It will be the Amphora of Protest. They will put neither wine nor water in it. That will be the Amphora of Desolation. And that empty bosom will disturb anyone who looks at it, more than if it were brimming with blood.

No eres humilde, y rehusas bajar como otros vasos a las cisternas, a llenarte de agua impura. Nor do you open to nourish yourself with little tendernesses, as do some of my amphoras, which accept the slow drops the night pours into them and live from that brief freshness. And you are not red, but white with thirst, because the most intense ardor has that terrible whiteness.

El amor los tajea de ardor, y no ven que son hermanos de mis gredas abiertas. Miden desde su quietud meditativa el contorno de todas las cosas, y su brevedad no la conocen, de verse engrandecidos en su sombra. They tremble in the hands of Destiny, and they do not believe that they waver this way because they are vessels.

Love carves the ardor out of them, and they do not see that in this way they are like my open clay. They hate their little wall.

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They hate the little feet of their base, which hardly li s them from the dust to receive a bit of daylight. And the breath of God, which dropped on them while He was creating them, le them in an even greater anguish, faintly remembering a great elegance and sweetness. The vessel for Falerno wine detests the acrid smell of the winepress. The vessel for perfumed oil hates its cloying thickness and envies the lightness of the vessel for clear water.

They are the most anguished of all. The Four-Petaled Flower My soul was once a great tree, on which a million fruits ripened. Later my soul was a shrub, a gnarled shrub with few branches, but it could still produce scented resin. One is called Beauty, and another Love, and they are close together; another is called Sorrow, and the last one Mercy. You who knew me when I was a great tree and who come looking for me so late, at twilight, perhaps you pass by without recognizing me.

If I see ambition in your eyes, I will let you go on toward the others, who are great trees reddened with fruit. Estoy llorando Me has dicho que me amas, y estoy llorando. Fallen to earth, I will cry until my soul understands. My senses, my face, my heart have heard: As the divine a ernoon wanes, I will head home hesitantly, leaning on the tree trunks along the road. Dios es este reposo de tu larga mirada en mi mirada, este comprenderse, sin el ruido intruso de las palabras.

Dios es esta entrega ardiente y pura. Y vuelve otra vez al suspiro. Y es esta certidumbre divina de que la muerte es mentira. God Talk to me now about God, and I will understand you. God is this tranquillity of your long gaze in my gaze, this understanding one another without the intrusive noise of words. God is this surrender, passionate and pure. Like us, He is loving in the morning, at midday, and at night, and it seems to Him, as it seems to us, that He is only just beginning to love.

He needs no other song than His love itself, and He sings it from sighing through to sobbing. And He returns again to the sigh. And this divine certainty that death is a lie. Yes, now I understand God.

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El mundo —No se aman, dijeron, porque no se buscan. Ellos, que se revuelcan en la voluptuosidad sin lograr unirse, no saben que por una mirada somos esposos! Your job is far from mine, and my home is not near you. Nevertheless, as I do my work, I feel as if I were wrapping you in a weave of so est wool, and you feel, way over there, that my gaze is falling on your bowed head. And your heart cracks open with sweetness! The day gone, we will meet for a few moments, but the sweet wound of love will sustain us till another twilight.

Those who wallow in voluptuousness without achieving a real oneness: Y eras puro, como la escarcha que amanece dormida en los cristales. They Were Talking about You. They were talking about you, bloodying you, with lots of words. Why does human language exhaust itself so uselessly? And you were pure as the frost at dawn sleeping on the windowpanes.

They were talking about you to me, praising you with lots of words. Why is human generosity exhausted so uselessly? I kept silent, and praise rose up from deep inside me, bright as mists rising from the sea. They stopped mentioning your name the other day and talked about others, with a warm respectfulness. The strange names dropped inert before me, fading. And your name, which no one mentioned, was as present as the spring that covered the valley, though no one would be singing it at that luminous hour. Va bajando el sol. Parece que te hundieras en la tierra pesada.

Vienes cantando como las vertientes bajan al valle. The sun is setting. Over the plain the night settles in, and you come walking to meet me, naturally, as the night falls. Hurry, I want to see the twilight across your face! How slowly you approach! You come near singing like the slopes that descend into the valley. I hear you already. The fading day wants to pass away across our two faces together.

Soy fea sin ti, como las cosas desarraigadas de su sitio: Contigo soy natural y bella, cual el musgo en el tronco. Hide me as the tree trunk conceals its resin, that I may perfume you in the shadow like a drop of amber-gum, that it may smooth you and the others may never know where your sweetness comes from. I am ugly without you, like things out of place: With you, I am natural and lovely, like the moss on the tree trunk. Why am I not small, like an almond in its closed shell? Make me a drop of your blood, and I will rise to your cheek, I will be in it like the living drop in the leaf on the vine.

Sigue por el sendero acostumbrado, llega a las alamedas de oro, sigue por las altas alamedas de oro hasta la sierra amoratada. The Shadow Leave for the countryside at dusk, and leave me your footprints in the grass, for I am coming behind you. Go down the usual path, to the golden poplars, go through the golden groves to the dark purple mountains. Walk giving yourself over to things, touching the trunks of trees, so that when I pass they may return your caress to me. Look at yourself in the clear pools, and let the pools hold the image of your face for me for a moment, till I pass.

Si viene la muerte Si te ves herido, no temas llamarme. No quiero que ninguno, ni Dios, te enjugue en las sienes el sudor ni te acomode la almohada bajo la cabeza. Estoy guardando mi cuerpo para resguardar de la lluvia y las nieves tu huesa, cuando ya duermas. No, call me wherever you are, even if it be a bed of shame. I am saving my body to shield your grave from the rain and the snow when you sleep at last.

Y la damos con un temblor incontenible, como el tuyo delante de un seno desnudo. Beauty A song is the wound of love that things opened in us. But our disquiet is continuous; we feel the thrust of all the beauty of the world, because the starry night was for us a love as sharp as a carnal love. Song A woman is singing in the valley. The falling shadow erases her, but her song li s her over the countryside. Her heart is shattered, like her jug that broke this a ernoon on the stones in the streambed, but she keeps on singing.

In a modulation, her voice moistens with blood. In the countryside, the other voices are already silent, in their daily death, and just a moment ago the song of the last straggling bird fell silent.


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And her deathless heart, her heart alive with pain, burning with pain, gathers the silencing voices into her voice, keen now, but always sweet. Does she sing for a husband who watches her quietly in the dusk, or for a child who sweetens to her song? Or perhaps she sings for her own heart, more helpless than a child alone at nightfall. The coming night becomes a mother because of the song that goes out to greet it; the stars are opening with human sweetness: From the throat of the woman who keeps on singing, the day exhales and rises, ennobled, toward the stars! Las otras se apresuraron, y se han ido con el amor y el placer.

Tiene una lumbre que apacigua. The Dream God said to me: I have le you the lamp of the Dream, and you will live by its gentle brightness. Your lamp has a soothing radiance. But, in truth, you will be the merciful one when with your gaze, living among them, you ease their hearts. No hay arte ateo. Decalogue of the Artist I. There is no atheistic art. Beauty should not be a pretext for lewdness or vanity, but a spiritual exercise. You shall issue each creation with humility, for it was inferior to your dream, and inferior to that marvelous dream of God that is Nature.

Duro, acre, sumo, el abrazo de la muerte. Why should You have made me fruitful, if I must be emptied and le like the crushed sugarcanes? Why should You spill the light across my forehead and my heart every morning, if You will not come to pick me, as one picks the dark grapes that sweeten in the sun, in the middle of autumn? It is Your love, Your aweful love, oh, God! It leaves the bones broken and wasted, the face bleached with fear, the tongue weak! Out of love, out of an abundance of love, I described what I will never see. People came to question me about You. Seeing that they were more anxious than a thirsty man who asks about the river, I spoke to them about You, without ever having experienced the full joy of You, yet.

You, my Lord, will forgive me that. It was their desire, as it was mine, to show You forth clearly and purely, like the petals of the white lily. On the path across the desert, the anxiety of the Bedouins distinctly makes out mirages in the distance. The traveler does not arrive, but in their zeal, our eyes picture him each moment, there in the palest horizon.

But that does not matter, my Lord: In one day of griefs, I could mature completely. Therefore I will sing my smallness in my song, so that You might turn Your countenance toward me if You miss me, my rapturous Harvester! But attending as I do to Your subtlest motions, I know such tenderness that it strengthens my trust in You! And I have smiled, dying of happiness, saying to myself: So, someday, He will gather me, like the trembling droplet, before I drop into the dust.

Gather me, then, gather me soon! I have stretched no roots into this human earth. With one simple movement of Your lips, You sip me up; with one imperceptible sign of approval, You gather me in. Amalos, porque no recuerdan a Dios, ni nos evocan la cara amada. Ten piedad de ellos que buscan terriblemente, con una tremenda ansia, la belleza que no trajeron.

He tolerates them; He lets them cross the dewy moss. Inside whatever is ugly, matter is weeping; I have heard its cry. Look at the pain, and love it.

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Love the spider and the beetle because of their pain, because, unlike the rose, they have no expression of happiness. Love them because they are a misguided longing for beauty, an unheard desire for perfection. They are like one of your days, wasted and miserable despite yourself. Love them because they do not recall God nor evoke for us that beloved face.

The bulky spider in its light web dreams of an ideal world, and the beetle imagines the dew across its black back is an evanescent splendor. La venda Toda la belleza de la Tierra puede ser venda para tu herida. Toda la belleza es misericordia de Dios. El que te alarga la espina en una mano temblorosa, te ofrece en la otra un motivo para la sonrisa. No digas que es un juego cruel.

The Bandage All the beauty of the Earth can be a bandage for your wound. Experience them like this. Experience the sky like this, like a bandage. The one who hurt you has gone, leaving you gauzy threads for the bandage all along the road. Each morning when you open your shutters, feel the white dawn rising over the mountains as a marvelous bandage, already prepared against the hardships of the day. A un sembrador Siembra sin mirar la tierra donde cae el grano. Di tu palabra, y sigue tranquilo, sin volver el rostro. Habla a tus hermanos en la penumbra de la tarde, para que se borre tu rostro, y vela tu voz hasta que se confunda con cualquier otra voz.

Hazte olvidar, hazte olvidar. Es un misterio al que asiste Dios y tu alma. Ha derramado sus criaturas y la belleza de las cosas por valles y colinas, calladamente, con menos rumor del que tiene la hierba al crecer. El calla, calla siempre. To a Sower He sows without looking where the seeds fall on the earth. Your glance, inviting them to respond, will seem to them like a solicitation to praise you, and though they might agree with the truth of what you say, they will deny it out of pride. When they see that you have moved away, they will harvest what you sowed; maybe they will embrace it with tenderness and will take it into their hearts.

Talk with your brothers in the dim light of evening, so that your face is erased, and obscure your voice till it could be taken for any other voice. Make yourself forget, make yourself forget. Be like the father who forgives his enemy if he surprises him embracing his child. In your marvelous dream of redemption, let yourself be kissed. Observe this in silence, and smile. It is a mystery, assisting both God and your own soul. God contains also this necessary silence, because He is Self-contained. He has spread out His creatures and the loveliness of things over the valleys and the hills, quietly, with even less noise than the grass makes as it grows.

Those who love the things of the earth come and look at them, touch them, and are entranced by them, bending their cheeks over the countenance of things. And they will never say His name! He is silent, always silent. The harp is not still for a single moment, nor is the hand of the impassioned Player. From sunup to sundown, God emanates melodies to His creatures. The hand of the Player pauses over them.

The Musician hears the souls He made, in discouragement or in eagerness. When He passes from the barren to the beautiful, He smiles, or a tear drops on the strings. And the harp never goes silent, and the Player never tires, nor do the heavens tire of listening.

The man who, sweating, opens the soil does not realize that the God who sometimes withdraws is touching him inwardly; the mother who delivers the child also does not realize that his cry wounds the blue sky, and that in that moment his string is drenched in blood. La tierra se extiende, verde, en un ancho brazo en torno tuyo, y el cielo existe sobre tu frente. Echas de menos un hombre que camina por el paisaje.

Una nube pasa sobre tu rostro, larga, suave, viva. La nube es su abrazo en torno de tu cuello, y no te oprime, no te turba. Es su beso sereno. The Illusion Nothing has been taken from you! What you are missing is a man who walks through the landscape. Join yourself with its silhouette. Nothing has been taken from you! A cloud passes above your face, long, so , alive. Now a tear slides down your face. His intonation ran through my trunk like a thread of honey. They all drank it!

Where is He now? All of our leaves have turned pale. Yo esperaba que asomara tu rostro entre las ramas. Y sobre la calavera de Judas, los labios quedaron, perduraron sin caer, entreabiertos, prolongando el beso. And Jesus said to him: You could have scored me with your sword, to mark me. My blood was ready, like a goblet, for your lips; my heart did not resist death. I was waiting for your face to appear among the branches. His mother laid a stone on them to try to close them; the worm chewed through them to shred them; the rain soaked them through in vain to make them rot.

They keep on kissing, even under the ground! No me humilla, como la llamarada del sol, y tiene un mirar humanizado de pura suavidad, de pura dulcedumbre. Arde en medio de mi cuarto: Para la tristeza, tiene un cristal violeta, y hace a las cosas padecer conmigo. Ella es, pues, la Perfecta. Desde afuera no se adivina, y mis enemigos que pasan me creen sola. Basta lo que alumbra su halo de resplandor. The Lamp Blessed be my lamp! For sadness, it has a violet glass, which makes everything seem sympathetic. It is alive from so many nights of touching my heart.

It still keeps the so heat of my most intimate pains, which no longer burns, and in order to continue has made itself very so. Maybe, at nightfall, the sightless dead come to watch, through the eyes of the lamps. Who could it be, this dead person who watches me so sweetly? If it were human, it would grow tired under the weight of my woe, or, warmed with solicitude, it would want to stay with me when merciful sleep arrives: From the outside it is invisible, and as they pass, my enemies think I am alone.

What glows in its radiant halo is enough for me. Leave me only what is bathed in the light of this lamp; you can take everything else from me! I pray to God that through this night no sad person is le without a gentle lamp to so en the glint of his tears. Aunque la vida nos esparza, nos hemos de acordar de esta red de las manos, tejida en torno tuyo. Para gozarte mejor, te dejo descubierto; no consiento que cubran tu rescoldo maravilloso.

Te dieron una aureola de bronce, y ella te ennoblece, ensanchando el resplandor. The Hearth Stone-built hearth, illusion of the poor! Looking at you, we have precious stones! All night long, fervently, I enjoy you: Intimacy is what you are: And I did, in turn, make my own into a circle of children. The hands of my children join above your coals. Even though the world scatters us, we need to remember this web of hands, gathered around you.

My grandmothers burned in you good herbs that dispel bad spirits, and in order for you to remember them, I do too, sprinkling fragrant herbs that linger in your embers like kisses. El agua canta primero al caer; cuando queda en silencio, la beso sobre la boca temblorosa, pagando su merced. Son labios que trajeron muchas sedes: Clay Pitcher Clay pitcher, brown as my cheek, you ease my thirst so! First the water sings as it falls; when it goes silent, I press my lips in a kiss above the trembling mouth, paying it back.

You are graceful and strong, brown pitcher. Looking at you, I remember her, and I touch your contours tenderly. You see my dry lips? They are lips that have tasted many thirsts: But none of these thirsts were like you, simple and docile; all three dried out my lips. How I care for you: I never set a cup beside you; I drink from your very lip, supporting you with my curved arm. If in your silence you dream of an embrace, I give you the illusion of having one. Do you feel my tenderness? I failed in many things, but I always aspired to be a gentle mistress, one who sets things in order with a tremulous sweetness, so you might understand, so you might sympathize with her.

I want all the poor people to have, as I do, in this burning siesta, a pitcher of fresh water for their bitter lips! Los bosques venerables fraternizaron con los jardincillos locos en la aventura de luchar por la igualdad. No; la igualdad de altura, simplemente. Sus voces sonaron a chochez. Luego vino la decadencia. Las violetas, que gustan de la sombra, con las testas moradas a pleno sol, se secaron. Las azucenas, estirando el tallo hasta treinta metros, se quebraron.

Las espigas se inclinaron, no ya con dulce laxitud; cayeron sobre el suelo en toda su extravagante longitud, como rieles inertes. Bello todo como Dios lo hizo: Legend has it that the vain cane plants were the ringleaders. The wind, leader of the rebels, stirred up propaganda, and soon no other topic was discussed in the gardens. The oldest trees fraternized with the wild little garden plants in this adventure, the struggle for equality. But what kind of equality? Of consistent texture in the wood, of the bounty of the fruit, of rights to good water?

Li ing each head to a uniform level: The corn did not aspire to be as strong as the oak, but to sway its downy grains at the same height as the oak. Their voices sounded out-of-date. An old poet, with whiskers as long as the Nile, condemned the project in the name of beauty.

He spoke with sound judgment about uniformity, about how hateful it is to all orders. This time, as always, beauty was the least important thing.

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The genius of the earth breathed a monstrous vitality under the plants, and so the ugly miracle occurred. Overnight the world of lawns and garden bushes climbed up dozens of meters, as if obeying an imperial order from the stars. The animals roared in fright, lost in the jungular darkness. The birds squawked desperately, their nests high up in the inaccessible shrubs. The white sheep refused to enter that obscure dense thing, where they would completely disappear. Meanwhile, the triumphant canes were laughing, lashing their leaves noisily against the high blue tips of the eucalyptus.

Then came the deluge. The violets, who love the shade, dried up, their purple faces exposed to the sun. The white lilies, stretching up their stems thirty meters high, broke. Their marmoreal cups dropped as if lopped, like the heads of queens. But the three Graces ran through the forest, grieving piteously. Say good-bye to that harvest! The stalks of the wheat toppled over, losing their sweet laxness; they fell to the ground in all their extravagant longitude, like stationary rails.

The Chicken Liberation Army

Trying to invigorate their stalks, the potatoes produced very thin tubers, no bigger than apple seeds. In plain fact, there was famine. In this state of things, only the huge trees remained untouched, standing as strong as ever; they had done nothing wrong. At last, the canes fell, signaling the total disaster of the leveling theory.

They fell when their roots rotted away from all the moisture that the net of leaves had not allowed to dry. It was evident, then, that despite all their strength before their project, they had turned hollow.

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Now they were ludicrous, like puppets or gumby dolls. In the face of the evidence, no one had arguments to defend the theory, about which no one has spoken again, not for thousands of years. Within six months, Nature, always generous, repaired the damage, making the crazed plants normal again. The poet with a beard like the Nile returned a er a long absence, and, rejoicing, he serenaded the new era: The violet is lovely because of its tininess, and the lemon tree for its slender form.

Everything is beautiful as God made it: But the leader-canes kept their stigma forever: Nadie creyera que las rosas, hoy princesas atildadas de follaje, hayan sido hechas para embellecer los caminos. Se quejaban las bestias en su ingrato lenguaje y los hombres blasfemaban. Las bestias mismas relincharon de placer. Las rosas eran mujeres, y no callaron su martirio. In the beginning, they were common because there were so many of them, and because of where they grew.

Nobody today would believe that roses, now lo y princesses adorned in leaves, were once made simply to beautify the roadside. God, dressed as a pilgrim, had been walking on the earth one very hot day. When He returned to heaven, He was heard to say: The sun punishes them, and I have seen travelers on the roads crazed by fever, and the faces of exhausted beasts. The animals protested in their thankless language, and the human beings blasphemed. Furthermore, the roads are so ugly, with their dirty, crumbling walls of mud! At that time, the rosebushes were showy and vigorous. The animals themselves whinnied for joy.

But it happened that humankind, as always, abused the things that had been given for its joy and entrusted to its love. The poplars were protected by their height. They took their complaint to the Lord. Trembling with anger and redder than their sister the poppy, they said: Not long ago we bloomed, whole and beautiful, from Your hands.

Now here we are, mutilated and miserable. Our beauty was fatal for us. We bent over to see the little bales of wool that followed him. And he, the scoundrel, said: Yet they bend down in greeting, like storybook queens. He opened his eyes in amazement, crying: The mud wall has dressed itself in multicolored calico, like a happy old lady! Lord, I glorify You through this! You should be using double quotation marks throughout. Single quotation marks are ONLY used for a quotation within a quotation. I was annoyed by quite a number of things.

As far as I can tell, these kids are years old; why would they honestly expect a business to consider hiring them? The whole story strikes me as kind of ridiculous; as soon as anyone investigates the chicken farm, the jig is up. This reads like a second book, a continuation of a story where the characters have all already been introduced. Maybe righteous indignation is easy for someone her age, but it burns you out pretty quickly. I want to talk some sense into her, or make her go haring off alone to accomplish her grand plans, to see how she fares without friends to bully into doing her bidding.

The Chicken Liberation Army reminds me of the classic adventure books I read as a kid, almost as though the adventure and excitement on the page becomes part of your own reality. Get to Know Us. Not Enabled Word Wise: Enabled Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item Would you like to tell us about a lower price? Okay, before someone writes me a nasty little note, no I am not a Doctor, nor am I going to be advocating any form of treatments here.

This is an opinion blog, not an article of scientific merit. Having chronic illness and brain fog has interfered with my blogging! A Chat between Authors. Thank you for joining Shane Hall and me in a chat about our projects and why we write what we write! First of all, thanks, Mel, for working with me on a collaborative discussion! So, the question I think… posted by Melanie Ifield on August, Smashwords ebook sale March This is just a very quick post for those of you who are simply crazy about books.

For one week only, … posted by Melanie Ifield on September, There are people who can work through the symptoms, others who are bedridden and still other who cannot look at a screen, or book, because the stimulus is too much for their system to handle. I am sorry it has been such a slow start to the year. Here in Australia it is set to sizzle, with a trio of days we are now in the middle of soaring to the temperatures of between degrees 44 degrees C is degrees F. When it is this hot, unfortunately those… posted by Melanie Ifield on September, Popularity Popularity Featured Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg.

The Return of the Dragon Lord: Fantasy series Chronicles of Novarmere: Dark Wizard Quartet Book 4 Mar 13, Available for download now. Only 1 left in stock more on the way. Temporarily out of stock. Only 5 left in stock more on the way. Children's Fantasy Series Chronicles of Novarmere: Dark Wizard Quartet Book 1 Sep 13, The Age of Corruption: Only 2 left in stock more on the way.