Tell the range and all that’s howling,
the flickers of life beyond the weeds,
the vulture’s furrowed brow of flight,
the blasted sticky Canadian lawn thistle;
tell the clowned-out clouds and the rain,
and all that makes you go quiet again,
tell them that you didn’t come here
to make a fuss, or break, or growl, or
scream; tell them-crazy sky and stars
between-tell them you didn’t come
to disturb the night air and throw a fit,
then get down in the dark and do it.
Ada Limon, Bellow

I went to the end of the alley of doubt,
as far as the cool night air of contentment,
as far as the rain-damp evening of affection.

I went to meet someone at the far end of the alley of
love.
I traveled as far as I could to meet another.
As far as the lamp,
the silence,
the fluttering sound of loneliness—

Sohrab Sepehri, from “Water’s Footfall,” The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems, transl. by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati (BOA Editions Ltd., 2013)
Everybody has a chapter they don’t read out loud
unknown