Happiness

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it. 

~ Raymond Carver

Büyükbaba

Ağrısına katlanamadığın bir an gelir,
çektirtilir. Ben de korkarım iğneden,
koltuktan, hele o koku - hastaneleri
içimde hazırlanan ölümü hatırlatan
dipsiz bir koridor olarak düşlerimde
beklerim. Biliyorum canım, biliyorum
dişten söz etmediğimizi. Unutma ki
bu saçı sakalı değirmende ağartmadım
ben: Farkı yoktur bazen dişlerin -
apseli, çürük, durmadan içimizde
zonklayan birini söküp atmamak için
ağrıyı korkudan fazla sevmek gerekir.

~ Enis Batur

It's Raining in Love by Richard Brautigan

I don’t know what it is,
But I distrust myself
When I start to like a girl
A lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right thing
Or perhaps I start
To examine,
Evaluate,
Compute
What I am saying.

If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and she says, “I don’t know,”
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them.”

I think he’s right and besides,
its raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That’s all taken care of.

BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
Instead of me.

If a Clown by Stephen Dunn

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?

If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extol?

It's this short by Richard Brautigan that holds the only beauty for this hot Paris day..

A High Building in Singapore

It’s a high building in Singapore that holds the only beauty for this San Francisco day where I am walking down the street, feeling terrible and watching my mind function with the efficiency of a liquid pencil.

A young mother passes by talking to her little girl who is really too small to be able to talk, but she’s talking anyway and very excitedly to her mother about something. I can’t quite make out what she is saying because she’s so little.

I mean, this is a tiny kid.

Then her mother answers her to explode my day with a goofy illumination. “It was a high building in Singapore,” she says to the little girl who enthusiastically replies like a bright sound-colored penny, “Yes, it was a high building in Singapore!”

~ Richard Brautigan