“It’s impossible to anticipate the future, but it is possible to anticipate the lasting quality in what you do today!” Louis Kahn

George Condo’s revelatory paintings span the centuries between Madness and Beauty.

“It’s a physical act of severance to become a citizen of another country. You can’t have dual citizenship, really. If I become an American by a change of passport, I become something that I’m not prepared to become.” Derek Walcott

Poem by Lakdasa Wikkramasinha—for the Sri Lankan Poetry portfolio. 

If you ever saw them together, which people in Alphabet City could not help doing since the four spent every waking hour and some sleeping ones in each other’s company, you would come to the incontrovertible conclusion that in their case civilization had gone astray in its socialization process and having deviated so drastically perhaps stopped by the side of the road to make amends and give them, as would a benevolent welfare system, rudimentary instructions on behavior among members of the human race. 

What follows is a small selection of modern poetry from Sri Lanka—a selection designed for some imaginary capsule, to be packed in with the American Beats, the librarian Larkin, Neruda the Captain, Paz the writer of silences, Popa the puppeteer, and Plath and Bishop and Walcott and, of course, many others.

Once upon a time there was a man who did not have something and there was a woman who had something.

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In the evenings
all burdens
weigh heavy

Benjamin, love beyond loves; my obsession, my object, object of my obsession; oh wordless lust, philosophical disorder.

I have looked into the face of love, and it is black. 

There are too few words
and in them
an immense silence is frozen.

Two poems, “To My Autistic Son, Revantha” and “Return to Sri Lanka, 1991” by Guy Amirthanayagam—for the Sri Lankan Poetry portfolio. 

Fireflies

Last year’s cattails stand mummy-like

Poem by Reggie Siriwardeena from the three poem series Three Variations for Cassia—included in the Sri Lankan Poetry portfolio.

“Draw me a lion.”
So I set my pen

In the spring of 1957, some cronies and I had a supper club in the dining room of the Green Lantern, an inn on the edge of Hanover, New Hampshire, where I was a student in my senior year at Dartmouth. 

Poem by Jean Arasanayagam—from the Sri Lankan Poetry portfolio. 

Three untitled slides, from the Boys’ House project, by Patty Martori. 

Beloved, Beloved, Beloved by all who knew him, friends and associates in the theater, art and literary worlds, dearly respected by his fellow writers and editors. He will be missed and loved forever and ever …

Two wall drawings, from the Erasure Series, by Gary Simmons.

Two paintings of gouache and ink on paper, titled Adam and Eve in Therapy, by Judith Shea.

Two paintings, watercolor on paper and oil on linen, titled The Artist, and Prick, by Katharine Kuharic.

Four enamel paintings on metal, titled Lipservice, Fun House Mirror (White Series One), Cherrys, and Glory Hole, by Marilyn Minter.

Oil painting by Matthew Radford.