Quotes from Mark Strand

I myself have started to feel the onset of something, a sadness perhaps, the dawn of a new season, and existence even. But enough of this. Tell me about yourself and what it is like where you are. Do the leaves ever stop falling? Are the shadows ever anything but long? — Mark Strand, from "Two Letters," The Continuous Life: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)

Will the same day ever come back, and with it Our amazement at having been in it, or will only a dark haze Spread at the back of the mind, erasing events, one after The other, so brief they may have been lost to begin with?

by being both here and beyond I am becoming a horizon from "The Man in the Mirror

And I, tiny being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss. I wheeled with the stars. My heart broke loose with the wind from "Pablo Neruda and his passions," The New Yorker (September 8, 2003)

Thick mist swirled up from the river. Someone, Who claimed to have known me years before, Approached, saying there were many poets Wandering around who wished to be alive again. They were ready to say the words they had been unable to say— Words whose absence had been the silence of love, Of pain, and even of pleasure. —Mark Strand, from "XLV," Dark Harbor: A Poem (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)

I]t was the way The ruined moonlight fell across her hair, It was that, and it was more. — Mark Strand, from section II of "What It Was," Blizzard of One: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998)

I want bad girls to win.

The Hill I have come this far on my own legs, missing the bus, missing taxis, climbing always. One foot in front of the other, that is the way I do it. It does not bother me, the way the hill goes on. Grass beside the road, a tree rattling its black leaves. So what? The longer I walk, the farther I am from everything. One foot in front of the other. The hours pass. One foot in front of the other. The years pass. The colors of arrival fade. That is the way I do it.

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end

En un campo yo soy la ausencia del campo

I walk into what light there is — Mark Strand, from "Another Place," Collected Poems (Knopf Doubleday, 2014)

I believe That someone is already there and is waiting For the pale appearance of another.

And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are. — Mark Strand, from "Lines for Winter," Selected Poems . (Knopf September 26, 1990)

In a field, I am the absence of field.

Each moment is a place you've never been.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.

We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.

When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been.

Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.

Keeping Things Whole" In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.