BUTTERFLIES: A BRIEF READING LIST

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which I cannot explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love, a sense of oneness with sun and stone, a thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern, perhaps to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to the tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal. 

VLADIMIR NABOKOV, FROM SPEAK, MEMORY

No one is able to explain
how a butterfly disappears
or how it emerges.

It shows up over and over again
to bring us the time we need to live.

HU XIAN, “THE BUTTERFLY”

My blue butterfly, caught one April morning by the spikenards; it ended up in a book; I looked at it years later and on days when I was sick. Martyr of light-blue leaves; its body like a grape, a black tear.
Fiery red butterfly that fluttered with the others, angel of exterminations, carnation that emits signals; I made out its face under a scarlet bonnet.
White butterfly on the day of the dead. Far from the casket and tears. It spreads across the armoire, the items on the vanity, like froth, lace.
We brush into it without knowing what it is.
My butterfly costume; wide, spotted wings. Papa labored over it.
And wearing it, as a child, I faced the world,
the foxes and finches.

MAROSA DI GIORGIO, FROM THE MARCH HARE

I still remember
How they found you, after a dream, in your thimble hat,
Studious as a butterfly in a parking lot.

JOHN ASHBERY, “THE OTHER TRADITION”

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail

ALICE OSWALD, “WEDDING”

Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal, flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene, vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs, contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions and shadings of its colors—whenever I experience part of nature, whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in, enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies, that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need, and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting, fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him, other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles, clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity, where one thing or creature says to the other: Tat tvam asi (“That thou art”).

HERMANN HESSE, FROM ON BUTTERFLIES

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA, “HOUR OF STARS”

You unzip my dress, a curve from the side of my left breast to the top of my hip. My body is a column of butterflies. One by one they wake from sleep, roused by the light and cool air.  One by one they open their wings, responding to some deep internal pressure, the instinct to be free.  I learn what it means to be in many places at once.

SHIVANI MEHTA, “THE BUTTERFLIES”

In the Butterfly Book
Dr.
      W.J. Holland
writes more or less:
“When there is no moon in the sky
When the midday sun is a dark cherry-red
When the seas are frozen and still
When the polar ice caps have advanced to the equator
When nothing remains of dead cities but dust
Then there will be
on the bare rock near the eternal snows of Panama
a tiny insect
perched on a bit of lichen 

It will move its antennae
                                         in the dim light

Alone
Alive”

ULALUME GONZÁLEZ DE LEÓN, “ORACLE”

My hands are beginning to find space
deep in my room—say a butterfly once lived in your throat, that’s to say you
once held the winds
under your skin,
that’s to say you once rode bicycles
on dusty roads, that’s to say you once saw pregnant women
and thought of flowers
hiding behind laughter.

ROMEO ORIOGUN, “THE ORIGIN OF BUTTERFLIES”

Even the wind wants
to become a cart
pulled by butterflies.

I remember madness
leaning for the first time
on the mind’s pillow.
I was talking to my body then
and my body was an idea
I wrote in red.

ADONIS, “CELEBRATING CHILDHOOD”

In the haunted parks they say—and this while a butterfly emerges from the palm of a hand and an old man swears he is standing up because he needs to save two of their lives—that the men from Esc light little bonfires on bright white plates. They say that they are pyromaniacs and romantics and that nothing can or should be done about it.

CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA, “THE MEN FROM ESC”

Two Butterflies went out at Noon—
And waltzed above a Farm— 
Then stepped straight through the Firmament 
And rested on a Beam— 

And then—together bore away
Upon a shining Sea— 
Though never yet, in any Port— 
Their coming mentioned—be— 

If spoken by the distant Bird—
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman—
No notice—was—to me—

EMILY DICKINSON, “TWO BUTTERFLIES WENT OUT AT NOON (533)”

He looked around his breakfast table. A rather nondescript orange-brown butterfly was sipping the juice of the rejected peaches. It had a golden eye at the base of its wings and a rather lovely white streak, shaped like a tiny dragon-wing. It stood on the glistening rich yellow peach-flesh and manoeuvred its body to sip the sugary juices and suddenly it was not orange-brown at all, it was a rich, gleaming intense purple. And then it was both at once, orange-gold and purple-veiled, and then it was purple again, and then it folded its wings and the undersides had a purple eye and a soft green streak, and tan, and white edged with charcoal . . .

When he came back with his paintbox it was still turning and sipping. He mixed purple, he mixed orange, he made browns. It was done with a dusting of scales, with refractions of rays. The pigments were discovered and measured, the scales on the wings were noted and seen, everything was a mystery, serpents and water and light. He was off again. Exact study would not clip this creature’s wings, it would dazzle his eyes with its brightness. Don’t go, he begged it, watching and learning, don’t go. Purple and orange is a terrible and violent fate. There is months of work in it. Bernard attacked it. He was happy, in one of the ways in which human beings are happy.

A. S. BYATT, “THE LAMIA IN THE CÉVENNES”

The wind carrying voices
cools, ruffles sleeves,
travels to the hem of the dress
while over the asphalt
in front of the wheels
sparrow dances with the butterfly

PHOEBE GIANNISI, “THE PRESENT MOMENT”

The steps stopped. Everything was quiet. As I strained to listen, I thought I could hear someone breathing. I felt a weight in the middle of my chest from listening and thinking I heard something: the same ill feeling as when they locked me in the cupboard for hours, the village deserted, and I would wait. This was the same. Nothing had changed: the leaves were the same, and the trees and butterflies, and the sense that time inside the shadow was dead. But everything had changed.

MERCÈ RODOREDA, FROM DEATH IN SPRING