April 28, 2020

Marie Bortolotto 2020

“Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen 
would later emphasize for me, isn’t 
about turning your back on the world; 
it’s about stepping away now and then 
so that you can see the world more 
clearly and love it more deeply. ” 

- Pico Iyer - The Art of Stillness:

Adventures in Going Nowhere


April 21, 2020

Marie Bortolotto 2020


The Poet's Obligation

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying "How can I reach the sea?"
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast.


So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

- Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet 1904 - 1973

April 13, 2020

Marie Bortolotto 2020

Marie Bortolotto 2020

Marie Bortolotto 2020

Dying and giving birth go on
inside the one consciousness,
but most people misunderstand

the pure play of creative energy,
how inside that, those
are one event.


Lalla - Kashmiri Mystic Poet 1320 - 1392 AD

Marie Bortolotto 2020