Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

In Praise of Four-Letter Words


We yell shit
when the egg carton slips
and the ivory globes
splatter on blue tile.
And when someone leaves you
bruised as a dropped pear, you spit
that fucker, fucking bastard, motherfucker.
And if you just got fired, the puppy
swallowed a two-inch nail, or
your daughter needs another surgery,
you might walk around murmuring
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
under your breath like reciting a rosary.


Cock and cunt — we spew them out
as though they were offal,
as though that vulnerable
bare skin of the penis, that swaying it does
like a slender reed in a pond, the vulva
with its delicate mauve or taupe
or cinnamon fluted petals were the worst
things we know. You’d think we despise
the way they slide together,
can’t bear all those nerves
bunched up close as angels
seething on the head of a pin.


And suck, our yes
to the universe, first hunger, whole
mammalian tribe of damp newborns
held in contempt for the urgent rooting,
the nubbly feel of the nipple in the mouth,
fine spray on the soft palate.


What does it mean
to bring another’s body
into our body, whether through our mouth
or that other mouth — to be taken in?
When life cracks us
like a broken tooth,
when it wears us down
like the tread of old tires,
when it creeps over us
like shower mold, isn’t this
what we cry for?


Maybe all that shouting
is shouting to God, to the universe,
to anyone who can hear us.
In lockdown within our own skins
we’re banging on the bars with tin spoons,
screaming in the only language strong
enough to convey the shock
of our shameful need. Fuck! —
we look around us in terrified amazement —
Goddamn! Goddamn! Holy shit!


- Ellen Bass

Hello, How Are You?


Tears without knowing why
Grief, deep grief for all the dark
the shadow side of humankind that
ends up spewing their disbeliefs on
my being and the being of my beloveds


Grief, for all the wars and all
the epidemics and all the human
throwaways...the un-important, the poor, the brown
the native, the jew, the muslim..


Grief for all that comes upon the shores
of our lives on this precious planet
that we are so readily destroying
out of greed, ignorance and self centeredness.
It is not my problem, it is their problem
Who is the they if not us
Grief, leaving this planet to my children and grand children


I want clear skies
I want equity for women, for workers, for justice
I want good food raised without pesticides
I want health care that is honest and not
in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies


Grief for all that is unseen and seen
It is mirrored in my heart.
Just these tears that don’t seem to have a label
an origin, a reason...some deep pool of dark that arises
faces of the homeless reflected
faces of the abandoned reflected
faces of soldiers in foreign countries killing each other
faces of families in mourning
I am in mourning
That is the source of my tears
I want a global resurrection and reincarnation
of cooperation
of loving one another
of caring for each other
for non judgments
for kindness
for a sincere Hello
How are you?


- Corlene Van Sluizer

Only A Pawn In Their Game

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCjGSbm2LFc

A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain't him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back, with his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't a-got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain
Only a pawn in their game

- Bob Dylan

Nobel Prize for his poetry (lyrics) RICHLY deserved! :heart:


A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game

Dylan's latest, Murder Most Foul, adds Light....

Annotated lyrics for a deeper delve into our history:
https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18

Pilgrim



I bow to the lark
and its tiny
lifted silhouette
fluttering
before infinity.

I promise myself
to the mountain
and to the foundation
from which
my future comes.

I make my vow
to the stream
flowing beneath,
and to the water
falling
toward all thirst,

and
I pledge myself
to the sea
to which it goes
and to the mercy
of my disappearance,

and though
I may be
left alone
or abandoned by
the unyielding present
or orphaned
in some far
unspoken place,

I will speak
with a voice
of loyalty
and faith
to the far shore
where everything
turns to arrival,

if only in the sound
of falling waves
and I will listen
with sincere
and attentive eyes and ears
for a final invitation,

so that I can
be that note half-heard
in the flying lark song,
or that tint
on a far mountain
brushed with the subtle
grey of dawn...

A river gone by,
still looking
as if it hasn’t …


- David Whyte

Variation on a Theme




Thank you my life long afternoon
late in this spring that has no age
my window above the river
for the woman you led me to
when it was time at last the words
coming to me out of mid-air
that carried me through the clear day
and come even now to find me
for old friends and echoes of them
those mistakes only I could make
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it
thank you good body hand and eye
and the places and moments known
only to me revisiting
once more complete just as they are
and the morning stars I have seen
and the dogs who are guiding me


- W. S. Merwin

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

The Cure At Troy

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

- Seamus Heaney’s translation of
"The Philoctetes," by Sophocles

So relevant now!

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Cure At Troy

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
...

---

Wake Up U.S. America!


When a ball player kneels upon the turf
to protest for justice when a bar-room song
made sacred is played, he is vilified
& fired. But when police take their knees
to the necks of their victims or shoot them,
more often than not it is called
"In the line of duty." Do we not see
because we sleep or are we blind
like we like to portray justice?
Unbind her eyes that she may see
that her scales are out of balance,
that she is not color-blind & if she is
to correct it. In the vision of the Tao
black & white are equal, one no more
of value than the other but her scales
are weighted to the white, all shades of black
not counting for much. Is it because we sleep?
If it is only sleep, Wake up U.S. America!
If it is that we refuse to see, may the gods help us.



- Rafael Jesús González

¡Despierta EE.UU. América!


Cuando un jugador de pelota se hinca sobre la hierba
para protestar por la justicia cuando se toca
una canción de cantina hecha sagrada, se le denigra
y despide. Pero cuando la policía ponen la rodilla
al cuello de sus víctimas o les disparan,
más veces que no se le llama
"Cumpliendo su deber." ¿No vemos
porque dormimos o somos ciegos
como nos gusta representar a la justicia?
Quitémosle la venda de los ojos para que vea
que su báscula está fuera de balance,
que no es daltónica y si lo es
que lo corrija. En la visión del Tao
lo negro y lo blanco son equivalentes, uno no más
de valor que el otro pero su báscula
se desequilibra a favor de lo blanco, todo matiz de negro
no contando por mucho. ¿Será porque dormimos?
Si solamente es que dormimos ¡Despierta EE.UU. América!
Si es que nos negamos a ver ¡Que nos ayuden los dioses!



- Rafael Jesús González

I look at the World


I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.


I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!


I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that's in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.


- Langston Hughes

It Is I Who Must Begin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvCjA8qRhwM

It is I who must begin.

Once I begin, once I try —

here and now,

right where I am,

not excusing myself

by saying things

would be easier elsewhere,

without grand speeches and

ostentatious gestures,

but all the more persistently

— to live in harmony

with the “voice of Being,” as I

understand it within myself

— as soon as I begin that,

I suddenly discover,

to my surprise, that

I am neither the only one,

nor the first,

nor the most important one

to have set out

upon that road.

Whether all is really lost

or not depends entirely on

whether or not I am lost.

- Václav Havel

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

It Is I Who Must Begin

- Václav Havel

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Beautiful, thank you! Some more wisdom from Václav Havel... who lived what he wrote....
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quo...1.V_clav_Havel

The looters came to my town
Rounded us like animals
Tore our families
Chained us in mass
Stuffed us in boats across the sea
Sold us like cattle,
Branded our skin


The looters came to my town
We grew the sugar for their fine tea
Grew their cotton
paved their roads
Raised their children
While ours were gone
They handed us freedom
In segregated worlds
Built jails for our young boys


The looters came to my town
They came to my hood
They stopped me on the street
They took my freedom,
Shot me from behind
Yet they are mad about haircuts


The looters came to my town
Their views made laws
Fear within
I wrote a check,
A knee crushing me
I am on the ground
I am through, officer
I can’t breathe


- Ana Horta

A Crack


Beyond the insular shell

Marking recent existence,

A crack has been made

Where the seed of soul is sprouting,

Opening wide.

There stands

Weeping in recognition

Of what it was unable to see

Imprisoned in a shell

That blocked the light of truth

From illuminating

The shared sorrows

Of the Great Heart.

It weeps in gratitude

At the hints of a forgotten togetherness,

Weeping of the Original Community

From which it’s been sheltered

For so long.

There it weeps

In remembrance

Of abandoned kin

Songs never to be heard

that once resonated in all.

Songs sung

By the old growth forests

And rivers

By the Rhinos

And passenger pigeons,

By another indigenous language

Lost each week.

Waters flow once more.

This time

A knowing

That all rivers

Reach the sea,

Where what was

Once forgotten

Is now remembered

And separateness dissolves

Into those streaming waters

Rolling down the cheeks

Of the world

In the direction of the Heart,

Spreading thin and becoming

Part of the song

Where it recognizes that

All tears

Pour

From the same set of eyes.


- Devin Jenkins

America: A Prophecy (excerpt)


The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;
Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.
For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.
- William Blake

A New National Anthem




The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets’
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps
the truth is that every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the shortgrass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?


- Ada Limón

Certainly echoes my sentiments. I tried to promote "This Land Is Your Land" as a new national anthem, a few years back. And I designed a new flag, too. It had people's faces on it, all ethnicities, all ages... :heart::heart::heart:

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.


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.


You can add up the parts, 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.


That's how the light gets in,
that's how the light gets in.


- Leonard Cohen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg&feature=emb_logo

And even greater on this video, I think...right now, it feels as if this is the greatest 8-minutes of video I've ever seen. The WONDERFUL humanity of Mr. Cohen, and his harmony with his ensemble and gratitude to them...and the incredible SOUL of the song itself...made, if possible, even MORE poignant by current events!
:heart:

To Change The World Enough


To change the world enough
you must cease to be afraid
of the poor.
We experience your fear as the least pardonable of
humiliations; in the past
it has sent us scurrying off
daunted and ashamed
into the shadows.
Now,
the world ending
the only one all of us have known
we seek the same
fresh light
you do:
the same high place
and ample table.
The poor always believe
there is room enough
for all of us;
the very rich never seem to have heard
of this.
In us there is wisdom of how to share
loaves and fishes
however few;
we do this everyday.
Learn from us,
we ask you.
We enter now
the dreaded location
of Earth's reckoning;
no longer far
off
or hidden in books
that claim to disclose
revelations;
it is here.
We must walk together without fear.
There is no path without us


- Alice Walker

You Must Cease
gratitude to Alice Walker for “to Change the World Enough”… and for her lines “you must cease to be afraid” and “fresh… high place”, “to change the world” which inspired


You must cease to be afraid
or your life will stay small and trembling
and what you have to give
will shrivel and finally be
as if it never was.
To truly live,
to live your part that the mystery needs
in order to change the world,
you must enlarge your heart
to its definition of courage.
You must hold hands with your trembling child
and walk together with every hand
every size and shape and color
every hand of our one human race
towards the fresh high place
where we all belong
and where the light there
makes us all see
and all be bravely known

- Kathleen Kraemer

Bridges


The past didn't go anywhere.
It's right here, right now.

I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn't live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered would get them in serious trouble.

That packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas.

I defy that.

Time is an enormous long river
And I'm standing in it just as you're standing in it.

My elders were the tributaries and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to and every song they created and every poem that they laid down flows down to me.

And if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, if I take the time to reach out,
I can build that bridge between my world and theirs.
I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world.

Bridges from my time to your time
As my elders from their time to my time.

And we all put into the river
And we let it go
And it flows away from us, and away from us

Until it no longer has our name on it, our identity;
it has its own utility, it own use.

And people will take what they need and make it part of their lives.


- Utah Philips

So wonderful to hear the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest again, Larry! Thank you for this.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Bridges
...

- Utah Philips

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The Bees

In the street outside a school
what the children learn
possesses them.
Little boys yell as they stone a flock of bees
trying to swarm
between the lunchroom window and an iron grate.
The boys sling furious rocks
smashing the windows.
The bees, buzzing their anger,
are slow to attack.
Then one boy is stung
into quicker destruction
and the school guards come
long wooden sticks held out before them
they advance upon the hive
beating the almost finished rooms of wax apart
mashing the new tunnels in
while fresh honey drips
down their broomsticks
and the little boy feet becoming expert
in destruction
trample the remaining and bewildered bees
into the earth.


Curious and apart
four little girls look on in fascination
learning a secret lesson
and trying to understand their own destruction.
One girl cries out
“Hey, the bees weren’t making any trouble!”
and she steps across the feebly buzzing ruins
to peer up at the empty, grated nook
“We could have studied honey-making!”



- Audre Lorde

Threshold

It has happened.
You thought you had some control
of your life
and that you were in a place
you understood
in a time that moved
from a past you knew
to a future that followed
in a more or less straight line.
But here you are at the edge
of a shore, the shallow waves
washing over your feet
taking the sand you stand on
away and suddenly you wonder
if all the ground beneath you
is disappearing.
You have stepped through the threshold.
The door closed and locked behind you.
You are on the other side.
You try to forget it, distract yourself,
but nothing works.
You check your messages.
The doctor’s office left a number
on your phone.
Is it is a blood test result,
survival rate for treatment,
or days left to live?
Now you are alone.
After the panic subsides you stand there
looking around.
Everything is fresh,
colors are vivid,
you can smell scents,
even subtle ones,
and your hearing is sharp.
You feel the breeze on your skin
and the tickle of hairs moving
across your brow.
You are pierced through
with the inexplicable joy
at having nothing.
The sand forms around your foot
and the water wipes out all traces of your path.
Everywhere you turn there is something new
and the space around you
holds you gently
as it spills out and becomes
a part of the expanding world.
So many things are remarkable now.
Here is the freedom that always frightened you.
You have forgotten your name
and it does not matter.

- Newton Smith

Freedom's Plow


When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.


First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.


The eyes see there materials for building,
See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.


A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!


With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
Freedom.


Down into the earth went the plow
In the free hands and the slave hands,
In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.


Labor! Out of labor came villages
And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it’s Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now it’s the U.S.A.


A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL-
ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS-
AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
And silently took for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.
It was a long time ago,
But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT THAT OTHER’S CONSENT.
There were slaves then, too,
But in their hearts the slaves knew
What he said must be meant for every human being-
Else it had no meaning for anyone.
Then a man said:
BETTER TO DIE FREE
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.


With John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Negroes died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
'Or if it would,' thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
Out of war it came, bloody and terrible!
But it came!
Some there were, as always,
Who doubted that the war would end right,
That the slaves would be free,
Or that the union would stand,
But now we know how it all came out.
Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
We know now how it came out.
There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
There was a great wooded land,
And men united as a nation.


America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises-that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
'You are a man. Together we are building our land.'


America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don’t be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don’t be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Woven from the beginning
Into the warp and woof of America:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
BETTER DIE FREE,
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
FREEDOM!
BROTHERHOOD!
DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:
We say, NO!


A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!


- Langston Hughes

Emancipation

Fling out your banners, your honors be bringing,

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Raise to the ether your paeans of praise.
Strike every chord and let music be ringing!
Celebrate freely this day of all days.


Few are the years since that notable blessing,
Raised you from slaves to the powers of men.
Each year has seen you my brothers progressing,
Never to sink to that level again.


Perched on your shoulders sits Liberty smiling,
Perched where the eyes of the nations can see.
Keep from her pinions all contact defiling;
Show by your deeds what you're destined to be.


Press boldly forward nor waver, nor falter.
Blood has been freely poured out in your cause,
Lives sacrificed upon Liberty's alter.
Press to the front, it were craven to pause.


Look to the heights that are worth your attaining
Keep your feet firm in the path to the goal.
Toward noble deeds every effort be straining.
Worthy ambition is food for the soul!


Up! Men and brothers, be noble, be earnest!
Ripe is the time and success is assured;
Know that your fate was the hardest and sternest
When through those lash-ringing days you endured.


Never again shall the manacles gall you
Never again shall the whip stroke defame!
Nobles and Freemen, your destinies call you
Onward to honor, to glory and fame.


- Paul Laurence Dunbar