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Enemies
If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,
how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then
is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go
free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not
think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.
- Wendell Berry
“Chin Up, Stiff Upper Lip,”
the father would intone, winking his eyes,
with the accent he pilfered from the movies of his youth,
with the demeanor of the rabbi he never became,
with the style of the Borscht-Belt comedian he couldn’t embody.
“That’s Dad,” the sons would agree, rolling their eyes,
with the sigh of the unwelcome,
with the sarcasm of the unacknowledged,
with the suppressed rage of the uninitiated.
Where does this poem need to go?
Toward the weeping mother who would rub her eyes
with undisguised longing for her carefree youth,
with the comfortable self-pity of her domestic prison,
with the dangerous hunger of an unsatisfied woman?
Or toward the happy gods who would avert their eyes
as they toyed with each other,
as they cast flame and flood down upon mortals,
as they consumed their own children?
What about the sons who pluck out their eyes
as they accept less and less,
as they tolerate more and more,
as they suck in their frozen chests?
Or the city that glazes its eyes in false innocence,
guarding its walls of imagined security,
closing its gates to the impure,
erecting its towers on unstable soil?
Or should we welcome the sons who pry open their eyes
as they demand their inheritance,
as they offer us their essence,
as they envision a world that doesn’t need this poem?
- Barry Spector
Candles in Babylon
Through the midnight streets of Babylon
between the steel towers of their arsenals,
between the torture castles with no windows,
we race by barefoot, holding tight
our candles, trying to shield
the shivering flames, crying
"Sleepers Awake!"
hoping
the rhyme's promise was true,
that we may return
from this place of terror
home to a calm dawn and
the work we had just begun.
- Denise Levertov
American Dream
American Dream,
American Nightmare
America the beautiful,
prophecy of Blake,
democratic vista of Whitman,
harbinger of a new humanity,
melting pot for Europeans,
Russians, Asians, Middle-Easterners,
Latinos, Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists,
Christians, Jews, Santaria,
Where are you bound?
You future is in your own hands,
grappling with each other
in grim clinch,
The White Mask, inflexible—
not even white, really,
more like “pinko-grey”,
as Kipling said —
firm against the Rainbow?
But is it not all One Spectrum:
under God, indivisible,
and some day with
liberty and justice
for all!
- Max Reif
Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where it is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That anyone be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free".)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the people! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free".
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-the land where every one is free.
The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!
- Langston Hughes
Before Evil
Before evil
my own goodness shrinks
before self-righteousness
my voice quavers
before those who know an angry God
with contempt for life
I tremble,
before those who hold
in their minds, in their hands
the lives of others
in hostage for their own,
before absolute Right
I am wrong
I am naked
without weapons
except for this determination
not to be defeated, but instead
to affirm the best in us,
to acknowledge our own power
to survive against whatever odds
and to seize the day
for love, for beauty, for humanity,
to make this day and the days following,
not theirs, not made by those who destroy,
but our own. We are the builders.
This day is in our hands.
- Doug Stout
American Tune
Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused.
Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.
But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
bones.
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant so
far away from home, so far away from home.
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
don't have a friend who feels at ease.
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
driven to its knees.
But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
well so long.
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
went wrong.
And I dreamed I was dying.
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
was flying.
And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
flying.
And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
come on the ship that sailed the moon.
We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
American tune
oh, but it's all right, it's all right, it's all
right, you can't be forever blessed.
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
to get some rest.
- Paul Simon
"We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an American tune"--Yes.
Thank you, Larry. And thank you, Paul Simon.
Another Woman
Another woman
would keep her mouth shut,
not spout fervent beliefs
like a speaker on a soapbox.
Another woman
would have chosen
equity over experience,
settling down or
just plain settling.
Another woman
would have stayed the course,
refusing distraction and
the pangs of the heart
that lead to upheaval.
Another woman
would not vacillate hearing
the voices that preach security and
the voices that harp on ideals.
Another woman
would not succumb to worry,
knowing that it never helps
and only constricts.
Another woman
would revel in her children’s independence
instead of mourning
their day-to-day absence in her life.
Another woman
would live in gratitude every moment
for her sojourn on this gorgeous planet
and not slip into the mundane
routine of forgetting.
But I am not
another woman.
I am this woman,
led by my heart and
pulled by conflicting voices,
a woman who
worries,
mourns,
forgets.
I am this woman,
this aging, outspoken, heart-stirred,
frightened and sometimes grateful woman,
This woman,
with this particular life
and not another.
- Maya Spector
Well, if you had your choice between this great Paul Simon song, and an English drinking song that's really hard for most people to sing that's all about the War of 1812, which would you choose for a national anthem?
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Neither. I'd go for "America, the Beautiful." Easy to sing and more upbeat than "American Tune." JMTC
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Roland Jacopetti:
Be Angry With The Sun
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years
Be angry with the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You
are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a leader and the dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
- Robinson Jeffers
It's a powerful and universal poem! There may be a range of opinion about its precise contemporary application.
Wow. Robinson Jeffers got it! No point in being ANGRY with the sun for setting, etc., etc. Maybe sad and regretful. Not angry.
Thanks, Larry.
Janet
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Credo
I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all, -- above, beyond it all, --
I know the far-sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the Light!
- Edwin Arlington Robinson
It's interesting to note that Jeffers lived 1887-1962.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by REALnothings:
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
- Izumi Shikibu
(Translated by Jane Hirshfield )
Consider the Generosity of the One-Year-Old
who has no words to exchange with you yet
and instead offers up her favorite drooled-on blanket
her green rhinoceros as big as she is,
her cloth doll with the long blond pigtails,
her battered cardboard books, swung open on their
soggy pages.
If you were outdoors she would hand you a dead beetle,
a fistful of grass, a pebble,
by way of introduction or just because.
And if, a moment later, she wanted it back,
it would be for the joy of the game
that makes of every simple object an offering:
This is me. Here is who I am.
In the same way, sun
drapes a buttered scarf across your face,
rose opens herself to your glance,
and rain shares its divine melancholy.
The whole world keeps whispering or shouting to you,
nibbling your ear like a neglected lover,
while you worry over matters of finance
of "relationship,"
important issues related to getting and spending,
having and hoarding,
though you were once that baby,
though you are still that world.
- Alison Luterman
Driving The Car
Getting into my car,
I vow that I will drive with
Mindful care and caution.
If, in fact, this is my vehicle,
For I often step into
Someone else’s car
By accident.
If I have done so now, here in the parking lot of Stop & Shop,
May I smile with self-compassion,
And not curse my cluelessness,
As the cars where I live are all Subarus,
And all the same model, and all the same “jasmine green,”
A bewildering forest of Foresters.
- Jenny Allen
funny, where I live
they're all gold
Toyota Camry's
like mine!
Whole parades of them, it seems! :wink:
A Killing
Black wasps build a nest in the bamboo chime.
I smile as I discover
the lattice of their honeycomb,
gamine youth playing 'round the rim.
Long-limbed dancers, pendant legs
dangle from elegant wasp waists;
my mind spins wild imaginings
around this entomological crèche.
And yet they strafe me when I weed
dive-bomb the cats into the hedge,
dare to cruise the kitchen air
wreck my peace so I make a pledge.
I comb the list of euphemisms.
No poison for me, though the die's been cast:
a heavy stream of soapy water
I trust will be the fix that lasts.
I pass the night in fitful naps.
serenity finds no purchase in my dreams.
My parrot mind yammers on
through backroom murders, shady schemes.
Next morning, when I check the nest
the wasps seem drugged, about to die.
Bodies larded, oiled with glue
they barely lift their wings to fly.
I feel sorrow, but relief as well
for creatures whose only mortal sin
was making their home in a human space.
The cats put on a somber face.
- Sandra Anfang
Expect Nothing
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny a human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
- Alice Walker
Rubai Sixty Seven
Enervating and hopeless
you may imagine the work awaiting you.
And you would be right.
Worse still, to succeed now you must be cruel
in order not to feel the wrong you must do.
Be as dumb as geese who change-off leading
as they victory together across a fresh and ancient sky.
Be dumb if you are dumb.
Be smart if that.
But listen, for you all have the same thing to say:
The come-and-go of God –
that is the gratitude stammering as you voice it.
You have, in yourselves, employment.
An old man tells you this.
Although in no way can you imagine that
in the room of youth that is yours.
Other rooms will come
slowly surprising you.
Your life’s job is to live it to its end.
But your Life’s job awaits you,
stored.
So never mind “correctness” –
that groupspeak of long-faced worthies.
Already you hear this this: I once felt as you feel now.
And didn’t know of
all the rooms to come – I had no idea –
the rooms – the wonderful terrible rooms.
- Bruce Moody
Horses
In truth I am puzzled most in life
by nine horses.
I’ve been watching them for eleven weeks
in a pasture near Melrose.
Two are on one side of the fence and seven
on the other side.
They stare at one another from the same places
hours and hours each day.
This is another unanswerable question
to haunt us with the ordinary.
They have to be talking to one another
in a language without a voice.
Maybe they are speaking the wordless talk of lovers,
sullen, melancholy, jubilant.
Linguists say that language comes after music
and we sang nonsense syllables
before we invented a rational speech
to order our days.
We live far out in the country where I hear
creature voices night and day.
Like us they are talking about their lives
on this brief visit to earth.
In truth each day is a universe in which
we are tangled in the light of stars.
Stop a moment. Think about these horses
in their sweet-smelling silence.
- Jim Harrison
Trillium
How ever bad it was, she must have loved the dog, their walks by the river. How the man who brought her here or what he thought no longer mattered. Say she was spindrift. That’s how it felt. Nothing engaged her. Days went by before she’d bathe. She could smell the animal like anguish in her hair and reveled in it. But for the dog she might have hanged herself, or filled her pockets full of stones instead of scraps for Cerberus. Two steps at a time she took the dark staircases. Outside the gates, among the beggar dead, she’d find him, kneel, unlock his chains. He leaned against her, as they walked, his sphinx’s shoulders. What he knew of her of course, no one can say. Call it a nearness like a room you make inside yourself for sorrow. Few are invited in. And she to him? Cerberus was welcome. In spring among the trillium she longed for him. Who could believe it was a pomegranate seed secured her soul? It was the dog that kept her going back.
- Deborah Digges
Today
The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: “Now,” and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.
Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,
you could close your eyes and go on full of light.
And it is already begun, the chord
that will shiver glass, the song full of time
bending above us. Outside, a sign:
a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,
“Be warm.” No one is out there, but a giant
has passed through town, widening streets, touching
the ground, shouldering away the stars.
- William Stafford
Salty Like Tears
When my daughter moved away to college
was the same week I had to give all our chickens away,
their sweet voices murmuring in the garden no more
was the same week her friend walked into the mountains of the Pacific Coast Trail and disappeared without a trace.
Our candle vigil burning through the days of packing
was not only the time of our own separation
but her dog and my dog, my dog and her, her dog and me,
our pack now 200 miles apart
And that night I read Ellen Bass’ poem
“When You Came Back”,
and for a moment
I felt our lives rewind until you were
once again that little magic bean
growing inside me.
Today I sat in a parking lot
with a bag of chips,
thinking how all my life I’ve had a sweet tooth
but now I want everything
salty like tears.
- Kay Crista
When You Return
Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes. The egg,
bald yolk and its transparent halo,
slide back in the thin, calcium shell.
Curses will pour back into mouths,
letters un-write themselves, words
siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
will darken and become the feathers
of a black swan. Bullets will snap
back into their chambers, the powder
tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
will disappear from maps. Rust
revert to oxygen and time. The fire
return to the log, the log to the tree,
the white root curled up
in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly
into the lark’s lungs, answers
become questions again.
When you return, sweaters will unravel
and wool grow on the sheep.
Rock will go home to mountain, gold
to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
to the spider’s belly. Night moths
tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
will be returned to coal, coal
to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
to stars sucked back and back
into one timeless point, the way it was
before the world was born,
that fresh, that whole, nothing
broken, nothing torn apart.
- Ellen Bass
A Song on the End of the World
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.
Warsaw, 1944
- Czeslaw Milosz
(translated by Anthony Milosz)
Holding Up The Sky
We women who walk the earth
petaled with phlox and rhododendrons,
delight in flushing out its beauty
We women are fields of purple daisies
gathered in crystal vases,
singing the virtues of sunshine
Summer is all a ruckus;
squirrel’s pitching walnuts, a clarinet and robin duet,
a whistling bamboo and howling dogs too
We women have extraterrestrial ears
tuned to stellar pulses,
resonating in our veins
We women have meandering muses
drawn to barnyard scents,
and orchards - laden with poetry
Where hens cackle all day,
proud of their creations
made fresh from scratch
We women travel light,
when our eggs are all gone
love keeps us moving
On we climb
guided by sisterly sherpas,
who have been to where we’re going
Above the Redwood spires
diamonds - set in blue,
crown our heads each night
We women are living circles,
some fixed - some wandering
tethered - only by our imagination
We women hold each other up
and let the sky
rest on our shoulders
- Emily Marie Bording