From the Greatest of All Novels

-- В горе счастья ищи.

"In sorrow seek happiness."


                 -- The Elder Zosima to Alyosha

Waitin' for a girl whose knees are much too fat.
Waitin' for a girl who wears scarves stead a hats --
Her zipper's broke down the back.
Waitin' for a factory girl.

Your heart is like a diamond.
You throw your pearls at swine.
And as I watch you leavin' me
You pack my peace of mind.

From the Greatest of All Novels

The idea in "Karamazov" -- expressed by the Devil himself in Ivan's dream -- that without the Devil, the world would literally extinguish itself because there would be no "events," is profound.

TFTD:

All my friends are gone
And my hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to play.
I'm crazy for love,
But I'm not comin' on.
I'm just payin' my rent every day
In the Tower of Song.

A Fond Kiss (and then we sever)

From Robbie Burns:

Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We'd have ne'er been broken-hearted.

Things, Looking Up

With my last, rattling breath,
I bear witness to all
And to everything,
With no audience but myself.

From the pastel toys
That spun above my head
In cheap Calder pantomime --
They were there to make me laugh,
But they made me cry instead.

I knew that they were alien,
Saw by instinct that they were
Just products of a plastic defecation,
Long before I had the tongue to speak.

But other things they made me laugh.
What things?
Well what's it to you?
Bits of human irony
In stencil on my parents' faces --
I could see with clarity 
Before indeed I had the tongue to speak.

To the mottled ceiling
Now above my hospice/hotel bed.
The tiny speck!
Why must it let me know that it is blunt organic?
Scurry from one crevice to another?

I want to know 
By just whose will you pick a point to stop you speck.
What nanocircuits firing?
And who made them
With more care perhaps than lavishing on me?
Who framed, that is,
Thy fearful symmetry?

My eyes refuse to close.
They disobey me and my jaw is slack.
I am weary beyond weariness.
And so I bid to you oh speck
(And likewise so to you my many broken loves)
A last, heart-felt, blank-stared "fare well."

From the Greatest of All Novels

Never in my life did I lend the unfortunate Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov (for he is unfortunate now, in any case) the sum of three thousand roubles today, or any other money, never, never!  I swear to it by all that is holy in our world.

                                                                                                                                     -- Хохлакова

TFTD:

Didn't you think I knew
That you were born with the power of a locomotive,
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?
And your Chelsea suicide with no apparent motive --
You could laugh and cry in a single sound.