the miraculous comes so close

Poem

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,

Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,

Misery gnaws to the bone.

Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,

cherries blow summer into town;

at night the deep transparent skies

glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close

to the ruined, dirty houses –

something not known to anyone at all,

but wild in our breast for centuries. 

Akhmatova

image: here

The Sound Of Silence

In the dark times

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing

About the dark times.

– Bertolt Brecht, motto to Svendborg Poems, 1939

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