Home > Author > Gabriela Mistral
1 " You shall create beauty not to excite the sensesbut to give sustenance to the soul. "
― Gabriela Mistral
2 " Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today. "
3 " Because she—you hear her—she's calling,and is always going to call, and it's betterboth of us die by the dagger without anyoneseeing us, Orestes, and die a fit death. "
― Gabriela Mistral , Madwomen: Poems of Gabriela Mistral
4 " I, Electra, fingering my garmentsand my face, for in hours I was changed.Now I am merely one who has killed. "
5 " I am Cassandra—she who, without asking,understood it all and still came to her fate,I, Cassandra, full of visions,who sees her own death without turning away,and hears in the night the day that follows. "
6 " She loved only her lover and Iphigeniain the narrowness of her cold breast. "
7 " And he keeps listening to seas that love nothing but themselves.But maybe now he listens to nothing,stalled in forgetfulness and salt. "
8 " Everyone left and we have remainedon a path that goes on without us. "
9 " Like cider and aged wine I was desired,desired like the sheer blue cascadethat dazzles the eyes of the thirsty. "
10 " I don't want to know, but I would liketo know it all from your own mouth,how she fell, what she said when she screamedand whether she cursed or blessed you. "
11 " The bronze of the door is worthless, alas,to keep me from seeing her who comesby the walks of myrtles to search me outdrunk with hatred and crazed by fate. "
12 " If it's all been dream and deliriummay death ripen me in my dream. "
13 " This salt mist blots out everythingthat comforts and speaks to the traveler:roads, bridges, towns, trees.There's no face I might see and know,only the mist whose insistent handruns over our faces and flanks. "
14 " The gods give, like twin flowers, power and ruin, memory and oblivion. "
15 " The night itself is riddled with her, wide with her, and alive with her.It seems that it has no wordor other traveler, no other secret sign. "
16 " Now what mattered to me no longer matters. "
17 " I killed a woman in me: one I did not love. "
18 " Already we mistrust wakefulness;if we are dreaming, then let us dream,until our dream convinces us. "
19 " I could have not returned, and I've returned. "
20 " A poor humiliated love burns in the house I see.In the vastness of the world,full of hard marvels,this love exists and suffers,wounded as no other. "
