seid umschlungen, Millionen / diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!*
Refuse not to see it. See it, see it, see it, see it. In the vacant lots, in neighbors’ yards, in the cracks in pavement, in overgrown front gardens, in gutters on abandoned buildings, around the neglected city trees’ bases, at bus stops, in public planters, along the highways: see it, see it, see it.
Beauty is here. Joy is here. Neither may last but: here they are. They’ll be again. Right there. In the most ordinary places. Real. For everyone. For every, every, every, every one of us.
Some things in my mind, that will now possibly be in yours:
Gwendolyn Brooks, “To the Young Who Want to Die”. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “That Nature is a Heracletian Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection”. David Marine, “Rauschenberg Alternate”. The ‘Between the Covers’ episode with Christina Sharpe. “Turning Toward the Morning” by Gordon Bok.
See you in a week. Thanks for being here.