Baja night sky, a photo by king damus on Flickr.

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182194 

'Journey to the Interior'

Behind the Curtain, a photo by DAV.es on Flickr.

'As a blind man, lifting a curtain, knows it is morning,
I know this change:
On one side of silence there is no smile;
But when I breathe with the birds,
The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessing,
And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.'

Extract from Journey to the Interior,
The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1968)
Faber and Faber Ltd.

Theodore Roethke
1908-63
Born in Michigan. He taught at the University of Seattle.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/theodore-roethke

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1964jun-00050
  

'The Silent Woman' by Janet Malcolm

For Love and Beauty, a photo by Artotem on Flickr.


p. 57 
'Their helplessness, passivity, vulnerability is our own. We all yearn toward the state of inanition, the condition of harmlessness, where we are perforce lovable and fragile. It is only by great effort that we rouse ourselves to act, to fight, to struggle, to be heard above the wind ... To behave like live people.
... the contest between the two principles that hedge human existence. In his poem 'Sheep' Ted Hughes writes ...
                               Death was more interesting to him.
                               Life could not get his attention. 
Life, of course, never gets anyone's entire attention. Death always remains interesting, pulls us, draws us. As sleep is necessary for our physiology, so depression seems necessary to our psychic economy. In some secret way, Thanatos nourishes Eros as well as opposes it. The two principles work in covert concert; though in most of us Eros dominates, in none of us is Thanatos completely subdued.'

Picador, Australia, 1994

Janet Malcolm: A life in writing