Lisel Mueller QUOTES

1 " . . .because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells the same story
but tells it differently
and none of us tells it the same way twice . . (from, Why We Tell Stories) "

― Lisel Mueller , The Private Life: Poems

2 " at home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth. "

― Lisel Mueller

3 " My husband says spring will be early.
He says this every year,
And every year I disagree.
He needs me, the dark side of the planetary equation.
Together we make the equinox. "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

4 " I thought if only we could go on
and meet again, shy as strangers. "

― Lisel Mueller

5 " Now in the thriving season of love
when the bud relents into flower,
your love turned absence has turned once more,
and if my comforts fall soft as rain
on her flutters, it is because
love grows by what it remembers of love "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

6 " Heartland
Now that we’ve given our hearts away
With the bric-a-brac, we want them back.
Now we look for them secondhand,
Someone else’s, in the old songs,
The slowly unfolding novels
We never had time for. Hearts
That taught themselves to fly;
…overstuffed hearts, still leaking
Downy secrets like feathers.

We want someone to say,
‘I give you my heart’, meaning,
‘Summer and winter’, meaning
‘All my time in the this world’… "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

7 " Necessities

1

A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas,
but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in.
With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up.
The green smear of the woods we first made love in.
The yellow city we thought was our future.
The red highways not traveled, the green ones
with their missed exits, the black side roads
which took us where we had not meant to go.
The high peaks, recorded by relatives,
though we prefer certain unmarked elevations,
the private alps no one knows we have climbed.
The careful boundaries we draw and erase.
And always, around the edges,
the opaque wash of blue, concealing
the drop-off they have stepped into before us,
singly, mapless, not looking back. "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

8 " Why We Tell Stories

I
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

9 " Tears

The first woman who ever wept
was appalled at what stung
her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Saltwater. Seawater.
How was it possible?
Hadn't she and the man
spent many days moving
upland to where the grass
flourished, where the stream
quenched their thirst with sweet water?
How could she have carried these sea drops
as if they were precious seeds;
where could she have stowed them?
She looked at the watchful gazelles
and the heavy-lidded frogs;
she looked at glass-eyed birds
and nervous, black-eyed mice.
None of them wept, not even the fish
that dripped in her hands when she caught them.
Not even the man. Only she
carried the sea inside her body. "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

10 " O brave new world, that hath such people in it
Soon you will be like her, Prospero’s daughter,
Finding the door that leads you out of yourself,
Out of the rare, enameled ark of your mind,
Where you live with the gracious and light-footed creatures
That thrive in the glaze of your art and freedom. "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

11 " Late Hours"

On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, and occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.

In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.

What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives. "

― Lisel Mueller

12 " How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

13 " This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent; "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

14 " You shall not twist my bones into a star’s shape, nor plant my hair as roots for the dreams of the living; and if you open my heart and run your poet’s fingers over its walls and cushions you will find it is like yours, dark. "

― Lisel Mueller

15 " What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives. "

― Lisel Mueller

16 " Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray. "

― Lisel Mueller

17 " I search the language for a word
to tell you how red is red. "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

18 " What happened is, we grew lonely
 living among the things, 
so we gave the clock a face, 
the chair a back, 
the table four stout legs 
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues 
as smooth as our own 
and hung tongues inside bells 
so we could listen
 to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles 
the pitcher received a lip, 
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us 
was recast in our image; 
we gave the country a heart, 
the storm an eye, 
the cave a mouth 
so we could pass into safety. "

― Lisel Mueller

19 " There are Mornings"

Even now, when the plot
calls for me to turn to stone,
the sun intervenes. Some mornings
in summer, I step outside
and the sky opens
and pours itself into me
as if I were a saint
about to die. But the plot
calls for me to live, be ordinary,
say nothing to anyone.
Inside the house,
the mirrors burn when I pass. "

― Lisel Mueller , Alive Together

20 " What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue. "

― Lisel Mueller

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