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  1. TopTop #2101
    meherc's Avatar
    meherc
    Supporting member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I have a Wendell Berry poem that you posted a long time ago -The Peace of Wild Things. I have it taped onto my desk right in front of me and have taken comfort from it many a time. I just sent it to a friend in trouble, hoping it would soothe him some. Thank you for doing this.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Weeping

    I have shut my windows.
    I do not want to hear the weeping,
    but from behind the gray walls,
    nothing is heard but the weeping.

    There are few angels that sing,
    there are few dogs that bark,
    a thousand violins fit in the palm of the hand.

    But the weeping is an immense dog,
    the weeping is an immense angel,
    the weeping is an immense violin,
    tears strangle the wind,
    nothing is heard but the weeping.

    - Frederico Garcia Lorca
    translation by Kenneth Rexroth
    from “Casida del Llanto”
    Last edited by Barry; 08-10-2014 at 12:46 PM.
    Marilyn Meshak Herczog, EA
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  2. TopTop #2102
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Percherons


    My sister and I went out to them with sugar
    cubes and bridled their heads when they bent down
    to eat from our palms. We led them over
    to the long white fence on which we climbed
    to the topmost rail, then threw our legs
    across their backs, clutching the reins to steady
    ourselves against their girth, steering them out
    into the hills until we were lost, or thought
    we were, only to find ourselves at Judith
    Creek or Holcomb Rock where we’d turn back
    in the early dark, gripping their manes, crouching
    low, galloping hard on the high soft
    road across the fields to the open barn.


    - Chard DeNiord
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  3. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  4. TopTop #2103
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Morning’s News

    The morning’s news drives sleep out of the head
    at night. Uselessness and horror hold the eyes
    open to the dark. Weary, we lie awake
    in the agony of the old giving birth to the new
    without assurance that the new will be better.
    I look at my son, whose eyes are like a young god’s,
    they are so open to the world.
    I look at my sloping fields now turning
    green with the young grass of April. What must I do
    to go free? I think I must put on
    a deathlier knowledge, and prepare to die
    rather than enter into the design of man’s hate.
    I will purge my mind of the airy claims
    of church and state. I will serve the earth
    and not pretend my life could better serve.
    Another morning comes with its strange cure.
    The earth is news. Though the river floods
    and the spring is cold, my heart goes on,
    faithful to a mystery in a cloud,
    and the summer’s garden continues its descent
    through me, toward the ground.

    - Wendell Berry
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  6. TopTop #2104
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Borrowing


    What do we own after all in this life?

    Shards of the moon, a shudder of pearl

    through oak leaves wrestling with the wind,

    its light borrowed, as our own hearth fires,

    from the sun.

    Wouldn’t it be better if from the beginning

    we learned the truth – that all is lent,

    that only our souls belong to us, and they, too,

    only for the lease-hold of our days,

    and little we know that number or what comes after.

    Astonishing in sunlight, the lilies have split their long buds

    to open each separate petal -- butter yellow blossoms

    ignited like the moon, as if from within.

    Remember spring’s first grass?

    The same impossible incandescence

    we once held and now must bring forth from within

    to burnish and give unto others – slyly

    and without effort, assuming another purpose – light

    escaping everywhere -- in the bodhisattva who passes

    no judgment, the old horse alone in the field, or the man

    in Tianamen Square, side-stepping to stay in the path

    of the tank. Light, the flood of it! Brief

    and unforgettable -- the broken moon, the lilies of the field.


    - Elizabeth Herron
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 08-12-2014 at 01:41 PM.
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  8. TopTop #2105
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Day is Coming


    A day is coming
    in which misery will end.
    A day is coming
    in which poverty
    will open bank accounts
    in every nation.
    A day is coming.
    I hear it coming.
    A day is coming
    in which the
    campesino
    will gather his children a green spring
    and go on vacations.
    I believe it.
    I see it.
    A day is coming
    in which a soldier will be
    decorated
    for helping
    instead of killing
    his poor brother.
    A day is coming
    in which lovers
    will serve themselves from large bowls
    warm love and faithfulness.
    A day is coming
    in which the Christ who returns
    is the Christ who never left.
    A day is coming
    in which the father will ask the son
    for friendship
    instead of respect.
    A day is coming
    in which the student
    and a poor laborer
    will be half and half.
    A day is coming
    in which the prisoners
    come out
    running in the fields and shouting
    about their freedom.
    A day is coming,
    I see it coming.


    - Lalo Delgado
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  9. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  10. TopTop #2106
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    It is no gift I tender,
    A loan is all I can;
    But do not scorn the lender;
    Man gets no more from man.

    Oh, mortal man may borrow
    What mortal man can lend;
    And 'twill not end to-morrow,
    Though sure enough 'twill end.

    If death and time are stronger,
    A love may yet be strong;
    The world will last for longer,
    But this will last for long.
    - A.E. Housman
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  12. TopTop #2107
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Anthem


    The birds they sang
    at the break of day
    Start again
    I heard them say
    Don't dwell on what
    has passed away
    or what is yet to be.
    Ah the wars they will
    be fought again
    The holy dove
    She will be caught again
    bought and sold
    and bought again
    the dove is never free.


    Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack in everything
    That's how the light gets in.


    We asked for signs
    the signs were sent:
    the birth betrayed
    the marriage spent
    Yeah the widowhood
    of every government --
    signs for all to see.


    I can't run no more
    with that lawless crowd
    while the killers in high places
    say their prayers out loud.
    But they've summoned, they've summoned up
    a thundercloud
    and they're going to hear from me.


    Ring the bells that still can ring ...


    You can add up the parts
    but you won't have the sum
    You can strike up the march,
    there is no drum
    Every heart, every heart
    to love will come
    but like a refugee.


    Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack, a crack in everything
    That's how the light gets in.


    Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack, a crack in everything
    That's how the light gets in.
    That's how the light gets in.


    That's how the light gets in.


    - Leonard Cohen
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  14. TopTop #2108
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    elegy for the red-breasted bird, rev 1


    for Robin

    red-breasted bird
    crimson song as wide as his heart
    gifts of joy flying off every feather
    bringer of light and promise
    that dark and cold are not forever

    to exorcise his pain
    he has taken his all from us

    to end the despair
    he has bled his wounds to silence

    hearing again the mourning-shrouded message
    that something was at its end
    its time was up
    he thought it meant his life entire

    all too common a mistake

    the hand of death abides
    holds the hand of life itself
    they walk together yin and yang through all our days
    our battles our celebrations our silent hours

    we who tire of the unwelcome darkness
    we who cannot imagine
    coming through the next endless night
    we who hear the roaring siren call of surcease
    and lie in the shadows of forgetting
    are easy prey for the lurking error

    the knife is always at the ready
    it can kill or it can pare

    behold how often do we prune the vine so it will flower
    dead-head the rose to urge its blossom
    run one more lap to tone the tired muscle

    it is too late for him
    red-breast will not serenade again
    but the call to die will rise in us again
    the call to death is real its urgency intense
    demanding response it will not disappear

    but let us listen again
    it is a gift a priceless tune
    and we must remember how to hear it

    we must harken we must seek
    we must embark on the dark treasure hunt

    until the hidden culprit is known
    until what must be heard behind the siren-song is heard
    until what has become burden is left behind
    until that which is at its end is allowed to die
    until what keeps us fettered is released

    so that all that can still live and laugh and love in us
    does remain


    - Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg
    ©
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  16. TopTop #2109
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Building With Its Face Blown Off

    How suddenly the private
    Is revealed in a bombed-out city,
    How the blue and white striped wallpaper

    Of a second story bedroom is now
    Exposed to the lightly falling snow
    As if the room had answered the explosion

    Wearing only its striped pajamas.
    Some neighbors and soldiers
    Poke around in the rubble below

    And stare up at the handing staircase,
    The portrait of a grandfather,
    A door dangling from a single hinge.

    And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed
    By its uncovered ochre walls,
    The twisted mess of its plumbing,

    The sink sinking to its knees,
    The ripped shower curtain,
    The torn goldfish trailing bubbles.

    It’s like a dollhouse view
    As if a child on its knees could reach in
    And pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.

    Or it might be a room on a stage
    In a play with no characters,
    No dialogue or audience,

    No beginning, middle and end-
    Just the broken furniture in the street,
    A shoe among the cinder blocks,

    A light snow still falling
    On a distant steeple, and people
    Crossing a bridge that still stands.

    And beyond that- crows in a tree,
    The statue of a leader on a horse,
    And clouds that look like smoke,

    And even farther on, in another country
    On a blanket under a shade tree,
    A man pouring wine into two glasses

    And a woman sliding out
    The wooden pegs of a wicker hamper
    Filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.


    - Billy Collins
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  18. TopTop #2110
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Kookaburras

    In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
    In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
    to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
    The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
    their cage, they asked me to open the door.
    Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them
    no, and walked away.
    They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
    They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
    home to their river.
    By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
    As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
    Nothing else has changed either.
    Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
    The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
    I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.


    - Mary Oliver
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  20. TopTop #2111
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    not an elegy for Mike Brown



    I am sick of writing this poem
    but bring the boy. his new name

    his same old body. ordinary, black
    dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
    until we forget what we are mourning

    & isn’t that what being black is about?
    not the joy of it, but the feeling

    you get when you are looking
    at your child, turn your head,
    then, poof, no more child.

    that feeling. that’s black.

    \\

    think: once, a white girl

    was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan war.

    later, up the block, Troy got shot
    & that was Tuesday. are we not worthy

    of a city of ash? of 1000 ships
    launched because we are missed?

    always, something deserves to be burned.
    it’s never the right thing now a days.

    I demand a war to bring the dead boy back
    no matter what his name is this time.

    I at least demand a song. a song will do just fine.

    \\

    look at what the lord has made.
    above Missouri, sweet smoke.


    - Danez Smith
    Last edited by Barry; 08-19-2014 at 02:50 PM.
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  22. TopTop #2112
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    well at least something beautiful has come out of this tragedy ...

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    not an elegy for Mike Brown

    I am sick of writing this poem
    but bring the boy. his new name

    his same old body. ordinary, black
    dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
    until we forget what we are mourning...
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  24. TopTop #2113
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Talk

    It’s more than time we had that talk
    about what to say and where to walk,
    how to act and how to strive,
    how to be upright and stay alive.
    How to live and how to learn,
    how to dig and be dug in return.
    When to concede and when to risk,
    how to handle stop and frisk:
    Keep your hands where they can see
    and don’t reach for your ID
    until they request it quite clearly.
    Speak politely and answer sincerely.
    The law varies according to where you are,
    whether you’re traveling by foot or driving a car.
    It won’t help to be black and proud,
    nor will you be safer in a crowd.
    Keeping your speech calm and restrained,
    ask if, in fact, you’re being detained.
    If the answer is no, you’re free to go.
    If the answer is yes, remained unfazed
    to avoid being choked, shot or tased.
    Give every cop your ear, but none your wit;
    don’t tempt him to fold, spindle, mutilate, hit
    or otherwise cause pain
    to tendons, bones, muscles, brain.
    These are things you need to know
    if you want to safely come and go.
    But still there is no guarantee
    that you will make it home to me.
    Despite all our care and labor,
    you might frighten a cop or a neighbor
    whose gun sends you to eternal sleep,
    proving life’s unfair and talk is cheap.


    - Jabari Asim
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  26. TopTop #2114
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Harlem


    What happens to a dream deferred?


    Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?
    Or fester like a sore—
    And then run?
    Does it stink like rotten meat?
    Or crust and sugar over—
    like a syrupy sweet?


    Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.


    Or does it explode?


    - Langston Hughes
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  28. TopTop #2115
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Street Cleaner

    She had a purpose
    Cleaning the streets
    Some days it was dirt
    Some days it was trash
    And some days it was
    Rose petals
    From the funeral marches
    Strewn on the road
    By insane mothers and fathers
    Who lost their sons and daughters
    Infants and grand-children
    To war

    She heard the voices
    Which arose from the dead
    Bodies never buried

    With her broom in hand
    She dutifully
    Made circles of rose petals
    In the quiet places
    To honor them
    A touch of beauty
    She thought
    In this time of darkness
    Then she moved on
    Her palm frond broom in hand
    Cleaning

    - Corlene Van Sluizer
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  30. TopTop #2116
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stop Throwing My Country To The Wind


    If the flames of anger rise any higher in this land
    Your name on your tombstone will be covered with dirt.
    You have become a babbling loudmouth.
    Your insolent ranting, something to joke about.
    The lies you have found, you have woven together.
    The rope you have crafted, you will find around your neck.
    Pride has swollen your head, your faith has grown blind.
    The elephant that falls will not rise.
    Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind.
    The grim-faced rising cloud, will grovel at the swamp's feet.
    Stop this screaming, mayhem, and bloodshed.
    Stop doing what makes God's creatures mourn with tears.
    My curses will not be upon you, as in their fulfillment.
    My enemies' afflictions also cause me pain.
    You may wish to have me burned, or decide to stone me.
    But in your hand match or stone will lose their power to harm me.



    - Simin Behbahani
    (1927-2014)


    (Translated from the Farsi by Kaveh Safa and Farzaneh Milani)
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  32. TopTop #2117
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rise and Fall

    Let go of fear
    and rest in that which is.
    For peace, like love,
    comes to those who allow it.

    Let go of fear
    and rest in stillness.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.

    Watch the tide rise...
    and fall.
    Watch towers rise...
    and fall.

    Watch walls rise...
    and fall.
    Watch statues rise...
    and fall.

    Watch empires rise...
    and fall.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.

    Let go of fear
    and rest in the arms
    of the One
    who has always held you,
    the One who holds
    atoms and empires
    and oceans and stars.

    Let go of fear
    and watch what happens next.


    - Larry Robinson
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 08-24-2014 at 01:57 PM.
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  34. TopTop #2118
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poetics

    I look for the way
    things will turn
    out spiraling from a center,
    the shape
    things will take to come forth in

    so that the birch tree white
    touched black at branches
    will stand out
    wind-glittering
    totally its apparent self:

    I look for the forms
    things want to come as

    from what black wells of possibility,
    how a thing will
    unfold:

    not the shape on paper — though
    that, too — but the
    uninterfering means on paper:

    not so much looking for the shape
    as being available
    to any shape that may be
    summoning itself
    through me
    from the self not mine but ours.


    - A. R. Ammons
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  36. TopTop #2119
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sure On This Shining Night


    Sure on this shining night
    Of star made shadows round,
    Kindness must watch for me
    This side the ground.
    The late year lies down the north.
    All is healed, all is health.
    High summer holds the earth.
    Hearts all whole.
    Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far
    alone
    Of shadows on the stars.

    - James Agee
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  37. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  38. TopTop #2120
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Meadowsweet

    Tradition suggests that certain of the Gaelic
    women poets were buried face down.

    So they buries her, and turned home,
    a drab psalm
    hanging about them like haar*,

    not knowing the liquid
    trickling from her lips
    would seek its way down,

    and that caught in her slowly
    unraveling plait of grey hair
    were summer seeds:

    meadowsweet, bastard balm,
    tokens of honesty, already
    beginning their crawl

    toward light, so showing her,
    when the time came,
    how to dig herself out -

    to surface and greet them,
    mouth young, and full again
    of dirt ,and spit, and poetry


    - Kathleen Jamie


    *cold and damp air: fog
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  40. TopTop #2121
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Earth Quaked


    03:20

    as sudden as

    a missile strike

    quaking earth

    sent me rushing

    naked into the street

    what does it mean when we no

    longer trust the ground we stand on?

    or the sky above?

    did it wake the birds?

    did they too hold their breath

    waiting for

    the great silence?



    - andrew zarrillo
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  42. TopTop #2122
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Last Drought

    Winds that bring no clouds
    clouds that carry no rain
    falling rain that doesn’t reach the ground

    I grieve bitterly for the home that has been lost

    tonight outside: sounds of rain, of a thin
    brief rain falling to the piteous earth—
    voices tender as ghosts
    that claim neither present nor future

    yet the memory of a birth-right to rain
    lingers— crystalline, flawed
    reaching across synapses
    that are already doomed by delusion

    we are dispossessed
    we wait
    but we are owed nothing by the sky.


    - Lee Perron, © 2014.
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  44. TopTop #2123
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Man with the Hoe


    Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
    Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
    The emptiness of ages in his face,
    And on his back the burden of the world.
    Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
    A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
    Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
    Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
    Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
    Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
    Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
    To have dominion over sea and land;
    To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.
    To feel the passion of Eternity?
    Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
    And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
    Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
    There is no shape more terrible than this--
    More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed--
    More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
    More fraught with menace to the universe.
    What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
    Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
    Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
    What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
    The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
    Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
    Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
    Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
    Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
    Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
    A protest that is also prophecy.
    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    Is this the handiwork you give to God,
    This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
    How will you ever straighten up this shape;
    Touch it again with immortality;
    Give back the upward looking and the light;
    Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
    Make right the immemorial infamies,
    Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    How will the Future reckon with this Man?
    How answer his brute question in that hour
    When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
    How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
    With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
    When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
    After the silence of the centuries?


    - Edwin Markham
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  45. TopTop #2124
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Crow Justice


    As I pump gas, a flock of crows passes
    Overhead. Then another flock arrives,
    And another, and a third, fourth, and fifth.
    Jesus, the sky itself is made of crows,
    And they’re louder than the nearby freeway.
    Could this be a family reunion?
    Maybe these dark birds are planning for war.
    Then, with one great hush, the flock goes silent,
    And separates into living currents,
    And forms winged rivers around a mid-air
    Island of three quickly deserted crows.
    Why? I don’t know at first, but then one bird,
    Much larger than the rest, breaks from the flock,
    Quickly followed by other large, fast birds,
    And leads a mass attack on the lost crows
    And snap-snap-snaps their necks, and as they fall,
    Tears them in half. As the crow-pieces hit
    Hot pavement, the flock, as one, celebrates,
    Yes, they celebrate, And I realize
    That I saw a public execution.
    A murder of crows, indeed, but what crimes,
    Among the crows, are punishable by
    Death? I can’t begin to understand crow
    Morality, Hey, I don’t want to try,
    But justice, like time, flies and flies and flies.


    - Sherman Alexie
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  47. TopTop #2125
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    He uses language with such artistry
    But what a dreadful image of the man
    Without whose labors we would revert to
    The life of shepherds, hunter/gatherers.

    If I'm missing something here please tell me -
    Tell me what it is. Tell me what you see
    Tell me what you hear. Tell me what you know
    Tell me how you wrap your mind around it.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Man with the Hoe


    Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
    Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
    The emptiness of ages in his face,
    And on his back the burden of the world.
    Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
    A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
    Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
    Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
    Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
    Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
    Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
    To have dominion over sea and land;
    To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.
    To feel the passion of Eternity?
    Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
    And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
    Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
    There is no shape more terrible than this--
    More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed--
    More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
    More fraught with menace to the universe.
    What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
    Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
    Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
    What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
    The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
    Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
    Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
    Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
    Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
    Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
    A protest that is also prophecy.
    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    Is this the handiwork you give to God,
    This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
    How will you ever straighten up this shape;
    Touch it again with immortality;
    Give back the upward looking and the light;
    Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
    Make right the immemorial infamies,
    Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    How will the Future reckon with this Man?
    How answer his brute question in that hour
    When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
    How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
    With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
    When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
    After the silence of the centuries?


    - Edwin Markham
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  48. TopTop #2126
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  ManWithTheHoe Millet.jpg
Views: 1094
Size:  54.8 KB

    Markham was deeply touched by a woodcut print he saw of an exploited laborer. It haunted him and his emotional response resulted in the poem. His words:

    “As I studied Millet’s The Man with the Hoe, I realized that I was looking on no mere man of the field: but was looking on a plundered peasant, typifying the millions left over as the debris from the thousand wars of masters and from their long industrial oppressions, extending over the ages. This Hoe-man might be a stooped consumptive toiler in a New York City sweatshop; a man with a pick, spending nearly all his days underground in a West Virginia coal mine; a man with a labor-broken body carrying a hod in a London street; a boatman with strained arms and aching back rowing for hours against the heavy current of the Volga.”
    The social reform movements of the time were the perfect fuel for the rise in popularity of this poem. He is talking about the injustice of exploitation of labor through time, from the beginning of human recorded history up until and including the labor exploitation he saw in his present world.

    The lines you cite refer to the fact that so very little appreciation is felt towards the extremely hard labor that goes into the luxuries we enjoy, so without these labors, we would still be in the hunter gatherer phase of human development. We can still say the same thing today. Without the labor of farm workers planting, plowing, pruning and picking in the hot California sun, we would not be able to enjoy the gifts of avocados, grapes, citrus fruits, lettuce, peppers.

    Aldous Huxley said “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”



    Quote Posted in reply to the post by gardenmaniac: View Post
    He uses language with such artistry
    But what a dreadful image of the man
    Without whose labors we would revert to
    The life of shepherds, hunter/gatherers.

    If I'm missing something here please tell me -
    Tell me what it is. Tell me what you see
    Tell me what you hear. Tell me what you know
    Tell me how you wrap your mind around it.
    Last edited by Chris Dec; 08-31-2014 at 05:12 PM. Reason: adding image
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  50. TopTop #2127
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    thank you so much for this, Chris. I had no idea. And his words about the painting? As powerful as the poem ...
    Last edited by Barry; 09-01-2014 at 12:17 PM.
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  51. TopTop #2128
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Living


    I


    Living is no laughing matter:
    you must live with great seriousness
    like a squirrel, for example --
    I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
    I mean living must be your whole occupation.
    Living is no laughing matter:
    you must take it seriously,
    so much so and to such a degree
    that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
    your back to the wall,
    or else in a laboratory
    in your white coat and safety glasses,
    you can die for people--
    even for people whose faces you've never seen,
    even though you know living
    is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
    I mean, you must take living so seriously
    that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
    and not for your children, either,
    but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
    because living, I mean, weighs heavier.


    II


    Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery--
    which is to say we might not get up
    from the white table.
    Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
    about going a little too soon,
    we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
    we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
    or still wait anxiously
    for the latest newscast...
    Let's say we're at the front--
    for something worth fighting for, say.
    There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
    we might fall on our face dead.
    We'll know this with a curious anger,
    but we'll still worry ourselves to death
    about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
    Let's say we're in prison
    and close to fifty,
    and we have eighteen more years, say,
    before the iron doors will open.
    We'll still live with the outside,
    with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
    I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
    I mean, however and wherever we are,
    we must live as if we will never die.


    III


    This earth will grow cold,
    a star among stars
    and one of the smallest,
    a gilded mote on blue velvet--
    I mean this, our great earth.
    This earth will grow cold one day,
    not like a block of ice
    or a dead cloud even
    but like an empty walnut it will roll along
    in pitch-black space...


    You must grieve for this right now
    --you have to feel this sorrow now--
    for the world must be loved this much
    if you're going to say "I lived..."


    - Nazim Hikmet


    Nazim Hikmet was arrested and sentenced to 28 yrs in prison on the grounds that military cadets were reading his poems, particularly the Epic of Sheik Bedreddin 1936 about the 15th c. peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule. It was the last of his books to appear in Turkey during his lifetime.
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  53. TopTop #2129
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    With Few Exceptions

    All death is generic, off the
    rack, or on, it's one thing or
    another. Old age, that Fool
    who crossed the centerline
    with whom you now share
    That same sad anniversary.

    Death of the celebrated is
    still simply a dissolution of
    sorts, even assassinations,
    poisonings, softly in the
    Bed-You-Made. Generic,

    not custom, not special, an
    Organ or another fails, a cell spirals
    into more, then more, replicating
    its cruel self. All death is like that
    not exceptional unless

    You're the one jogging that
    Lonely stretch of beach just as
    a rotting Whale reaches gaseous
    Perfection and explodes,
    or while walking the dog, a perigee moon

    making midnight into day, a drop
    of Space Detritus finds you unaware
    and unafraid and the dog stays beside
    you while you gratefully
    tell your life goodbye.


    - Rebecca del Rio
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  55. TopTop #2130
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Last Wolf


    The last wolf hurried toward me
    through the ruined city,
    and I heard his baying echoes
    down the steep smashed warrens
    of Montgomery Street and past
    the ruby-crowned highrises
    left standing,
    their lighted elevators useless

    Passing the flicking red and green
    of traffic signals
    baying his way eastward
    in the mystery of his wild loping gait
    closer the sounds in the deadly night
    through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks

    I heard his voice ascending the hill
    and at last his low whine as he came
    floor by empty floor to the room
    where I sat
    in my narrow bed looking west, waiting

    I heard him snuffle at the door and
    I watched

    He trotted across the floor
    he laid his long gray muzzle
    on the spare white spread
    and his eyes burned yellow
    his small dotted eyebrows quivered

    Yes, I said.

    I know what they have done.


    - Mary TallMountain
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