Cleaning women, London, 1950.
Photographer: Irwin Penn
Beware, child. There are wolves in the world.
Photographer: Wynn Bullock
Love. England, 1969.
Photographer: William Vanderson
The World is a Broken Window
Photographer: Unknown
A Letter from Home
She sends me news of blue jays, frost,
Of stars and now the harvest moon
That rides above the stricken hills.
Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain,
And lists what is already lost.
Here where my life seems hard and slow,
I read of glowing melons piled
Beside the door, and baskets filled
With fennel, rosemary and dill,
While all she could not gather in
Or hid in leaves, grow black and falls.
Here where my life seems hard and strange,
I read her wild excitement when
Stars climb, frost comes, and blue jays sing.
The broken year will make no change
Upon her wise and whirling heart; -
She knows how people always plan
To live their lives, and never do.
She will not tell me if she cries.
I touch the crosses by her name;
I fold the pages as I rise,
And tip the envelope, from which
Drift scraps of borage, woodbine, rue.
Mary Oliver
The glorious Betty White. 1954.
Photographer: Getty images
There is, of course, no need to fear the dark, much less prevail over it. Not that we could. Look up in the sky on a starry night, if you can still find one, and you will see that there is a lot of darkness in the universe. There is so much of it, in fact, that it simply has to be the foundation of all that is. The stars are an anomaly in the face of it, the planets an accident. Is it evil or indifferent? I don’t think so. Our lives begin in the womb and end in the tomb. It’s dark on either side
Clark Strand, from Why We Need the Winter Solstice
Longing. 1950s.
Photographer: Peter Bosch
Best Friends. England, 1947.
Photographer: Pat English
Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H.L. Mencken
Let it go, let it leave, let it happen. Nothing in this world was promised or belonged to you anyway.
Rupi Kaur, All You Own Is Yourself
Silence
Photographer: Martin Roe
Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head. New York City. 1940s.
Photographer: John Vachon
What’s Up, Pussycat?
Photographer: Goran Perojevic
Though you are three times more beautiful than angels,
Though you are the sister of the river willows,
I will kill you with my singing,
Without spilling your blood on the ground.
Not touching you with my hand,
Not giving you one glance, I will stop loving you,
But with your unimaginable groans
I will finally slake my thirst.
From her, who wandered the earth before me,
Crueler than ice, more fiery than flame,
From her, who still exists in the ether—
From her you will set me free.
Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Leaving Yerevan
Photographer: Thomas Leuthard