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The Seven Ages QUOTES

The Seven Ages QUOTES

1 " I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,

not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:

you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.

Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth–

Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.

Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive. "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

2 " Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—
surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects
to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.
I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention. "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

3 " Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived—
what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death? "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

4 " I even loved a few times in my disgusting human way. "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

5 " I was a winged obsessive, my moonlit
feathers were paper. I lived hardly at all among men and women;

I spoke only to angels. How fortunate my days,
how charged and meaningful the nights’ continuous silence and opacity.

— Louise Glück, from “Ancient Text,” The Seven Ages. (Ecco; Reprint edition March 26, 2002) Originally published 2000. "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

6 " What do we have to appease the great forces? "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

7 " Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you
it will not keep you alive. "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

8 " The curtains parted. Light
coming in. Moonlight, then sunlight.
Not changing because time was passing
but because the one moment had many aspects. "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages

9 " I call to you across a monstrous river or chasm
to caution you, to prepare you.
Earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,
subtly, not to say with connivance...
Solace, then deep immersion.
I loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,
the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,
somehow suspended, floating, its needs
fully exposed, awakened, fully alive...
I caution you as I was never cautioned:
you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damages and scarred, you will continue to hunger.
Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth...
It will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.
- From The Sensual World "

― Louise Glück , The Seven Ages