“To be left behind… or to leave behind. I wonder which hurts more.”
Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 16
"Keep Gomorrah Weird", Texas Monthly (December 2004) http://www.texasmonthly.com/2004-12-01/friedman.php
“To be left behind… or to leave behind. I wonder which hurts more.”
Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 16
“The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.”
Written after a thief robbed his hut, as translated in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry (1993) by Stephen Mitchell, p. 162
“So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.”
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Context: This ascent will be betrayed to Gravity. But the Rocket engine, the deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. The victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of Escape....
Moving now toward the kind of light where at last the apple is apple-colored. The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.
“One of my first jobs was on a lesbian cruise. I was the ship comedian for the Lesbian Love Boat.”
From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour
“Why couldn't I get the lesbians for an hour? And the lesbian poet serenade my Mexican audience?”
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)
Context: My reading was scheduled for the six-thirty slot by the University of Arizona. A few hundred people showed up – old more than young; mostly brown. I liked my "them," in any case, for coming to listen, postponing their dinners. In the middle of one of my paragraphs, a young man stood to gather his papers, then retreated up the aisle, pushed open the door at the back of the auditorium. In the trapezoid of lobby-light thus revealed, I could see a crowd was forming for the eight o'clock reading — a lesbian poet. Then the door closed, resealed the present; I continued to read, but wondered to myself: Why couldn't I get the lesbians for an hour? And the lesbian poet serenade my Mexican audience?
“I feel like a visitor that got left behind by his ride.”
“Bad herdsmen waste the flocks which thou hast left behind.”
XVII. 246 (tr. Worsley).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)