few words we have to say

All I want is to speak simply; for this grace I pray.
For we have loaded even the song with so many kinds of music
That gradually it sinks.
And our art we so decorated that beneath the gilt
Its face is eaten away.
And it is now time for us to say the few words we have to say
Because tomorrow our soul sets sail.

—George Seferis, from “An Old Man on the River Bank,” George Seferis: Poems (Little, Brown and Company, 1964), translated by Rex Warner.

darwinian word

Emerson opined that words are ‘fossil poetry’. But the trick is to naturally select those Darwinian words which will manage to stay out of the fossil record.

proper names

Now, I am a person who likes simple words. It is true, I had realised before this journey that there was much evil and injustice in the world that I had now left, but I had believed I could shake the foundations if I called things by their proper name. I knew such an enterprise meant returning to absolute naiveté. This naiveté I considered as a primal vision purified of the slag of centuries of hoary lies about the world.

—Paul Celan, "Edgar Jené and The Dream About The Dream," Collected Prose (Carcanet, 1986), translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

word bounty

My mind moved like a combine through those lines, harvesting a bounty of words.