"The Windhover" - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,	5
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion	10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion

If you are turned away by someone inscrutable whom you nonetheless love, what do you learn?

Fanny Howe, "After 'Prologue'"

Wanting to know is what makes me do things I don't want to do.

Wanting to know how far I can go with what I know.

Fanny Howe, "Catholic"

The Catholic Church once demonstrated the belief that the brain is the site of consciousness; that the body is not an illusion; that a person can be injured by thoughts. In accepting this situation, the Church tried to influence people, to turn ugly words into radiant ones, to feed each mind with sublime vocabularies. To offer repetition, rhythm, an end to the separation between speaking and hearing.

Fanny Howe, White Lines

Our field is the sky

Worked by the sweat of motors,

Faced with the night

At risk of motors

Who lived here? WHo has clean hands?

Who glinted in the phantom night

For other phantoms?

Who lives there below? Who is weeping?

Who has lost the key to the house?

Who cannot find the bed? Who is sleeping

On the steps of the stairs? Who, when the morning comes,

Will dare to interpret the silvery trail?

Look above me

When the water again pushes the watermill round,

Who will dare to remember the night?

Ingeborg Bachmann, "Fleeing by Night"

Who is walking beneath the quayside trees? Who is lost, utterly lost? On whose tomb does the grass grow? Dreams have arrived, they came up against the current, they climb the quayside wall with the aid of a ladder. People stop. People converse with them. They know many things. Only they do not know where they come from. That they do not know. It is warm on this autumn evening. They turn to the river and raise their arms. "Why do you raise your arms, and not close them round us?"

Kafka

Writers are afraid. Almost all those whose instrument of work is language are afraid: journalists, critics, university teachers, almost all of them. Fear and lies govern their tastes and their activities. Fear of what? Fear of death by social starvation, fear of not being invited to the dominant banquet, fear of not immediately receiving a pittance of compliments, fear of not being published, of not winning prizes, of not being invited onto the greatest possible number of TV programs. Fear of not belonging to the powerful cliques that reign over institutions private and public, fear of not belonging to the inquisition clubs. Fear for their reputation, fear of not being cited in the maximum number of papers, fear of not always being congratulated, of never being congratulated, fear of being unmasked and called inferior, fear of not getting in touch with the establishment, fear of never getting a taste of power, fear of exile, of cold, of solitude, of that sever climate that follows the artist, as Joyce well knew. Fear of being honest and of this old fashioned virtue costing them very dearly indeed.

Helene Cixous, We who are free, are we free?