Linda Pastan Quotes

I am tired of the litany
of months, September October
I am tired of the way the seasons
keep changing, mimicking
the seasons of the flesh
which are real and finite.

Evil is simply
a grammatical error:
a failure to leap
the precipice
between "he"
and "I.

To be the other woman
is to be a season
that is always about to end,
when the air is flowered
with jasmine and peach,
and the weather day after day
is flawless,
and the forecast
is hurricane.

Spring is the shortest season.

I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]

Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut.

Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed - the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched out before me
like the halls of a nightmare;
because I knew exactly what I wanted;
because I knew exactly nothing;
because I shed my childhood with my clothes -
they both had years of wear in them;
because your eyes were darker than my father's;
because my father said I could do better;
because I wanted badly to say no;
because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;"
because you were a door I could slam shut;
because endings are written before beginnings;
because I knew that after twenty years
you'd bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes.

[But the constricted light,
the year closing down on itself with all
the vacancies of January ahead, leave me
unreconciled even to beauty.]
When will you be coming back?

I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.

I regret the way pain has taught me nothing.

What we want is never simple.