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crackin QUOTES

crackin QUOTES

1 " If You Knew

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm
brush your fingertips
along the lifeline's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time? "

― Ellen Bass , The Human Line

2 " The Last LeafI saw him once before,As he passed by the door,And againThe pavement stones resound,As he totters o'er the groundWith his cane.They say that in his prime,Ere the pruning-knife of TimeCut him down,Not a better man was foundBy the Crier on his roundThrough the town.But now he walks the streets,And looks at all he meetsSad and wan,And he shakes his feeble head,That it seems as if he said," They are gone." The mossy marbles restOn the lips that he has prestIn their bloom,And the names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.My grandmamma has saidPoor old lady, she is deadLong agoThat he had a Roman nose,And his cheek was like a roseIn the snow;But now his nose is thin,And it rests upon his chinLike a staff,And a crook is in his back,And a melancholy crackIn his laugh.I know it is a sinFor me to sit and grinAt him here;But the old three-cornered hat,And the breeches, and all that,Are so queer!And if I should live to beThe last leaf upon the treeIn the spring,Let them smile, as I do now,At the old forsaken boughWhere I cling. "