311009

there was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
the women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.
there were the men who had been [...]

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271009

i gave a presentation on edith wyschogrod’s saints and postmodernism: revisioning moral philosophy (chicago UP, 1990) recently. the epigraph to the first chapter reads:
there is a thought that has haunted me for a long time… it is to portray a wholly good man. nothing is more difficult…especially in our time.
- feodor dostoevsky in a letter [...]

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221009

swallows are flying grief-circles over their featherless young,
night-dropped and dead on the wooden steps.
the aspen leaves have turned grey,
slapped by the hard, west wind.
someone who knows how little he knows
is like the man who comes to a clearing in the forest,
and sees the light spikes,
and suddenly senses how happy his life has been.
- charles wright, [...]

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harakaat

in the arabic script, it is said, the vowels are not normally marked. an english transcription of an arabic phrase (…) has to insert the missing vowels. but this way of putting it is misleading. the vowel is a peculiar european invention, and is not something ‘missing’ from arabic. arabic words are formed by what [...]

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