We sit in the ruin, each reading a book, or three of us read out of four. Three different voices speak to us. We have taught the children to read again this week. Here, where there is no voice, apart from ours, they are desperate for any other. They will even sing to themselves, sometimes. The boy whistles. He makes his voice croak. He sings the same thing again, but breathing in. A bird echoes the first notes of Vivaldi. Joanna Walsh
About This Quote

The above quote is a hauntingly beautiful poem by the late American poet Robert Lowell. It is a poem about a group of children sitting around a fire reading. The three people in the poem are the children and the fourth person is their mother who has been missing for some time. The other thing that makes this poem so powerful is that the adults in the poem are reading from books.

In this case, their books are dealing with love and loss. One of the children reads about being “born whole” while another reads about how he’s “born sick,” and a third reads about how he “born dead.”

Source: Vertigo

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  1. There is something about my face in the mirrors that catch it. Even at a distance it will never be right again, not even to a casual glance. Beauty: it's the upkeep that costs, that's what Balzac said, not the initial investment.
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