Printable View
Often I Imagine The Earth
Often I imagine the earth
through the eyes of the atoms we’re made of—
atoms, peculiar
atoms everywhere—
no me, no you, no opinions,
no beginning, no middle, no end,
soaring together like those
ancient Chinese birds
hatched miraculously with only one wing,
helping each other fly home.
- Dan Gerber
We Have A Beautiful Mother
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her hills
Are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
Hills.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her oceans
Are wombs
Her wombs
Oceans.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her teeth
The white stones
At the edge
Of the water
The summer
Grasses
Her plentiful
Hair.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her green lap
Immense
Her brown embrace
Eternal
Her blue body
Everything we know.
- Alice Walker
Miracle Fair
Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.
An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.
One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.
Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.
An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.
First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.
Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.
A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.
A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.
A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.
A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.
An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.
- Wislawa Szymborska
(translation by Joanna Trzeciak)
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 too 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
Earth
*
Let the day grow on you upward
through your feet,
the vegetal knuckles,
*
to your knees of stone,
until by evening you are a black tree;
feel, with evening,
*
the swifts thicken your hair,
the new moon rising out of your forehead,
and the moonlit veins of silver
*
running from your armpits
like rivulets under white leaves.
Sleep, as ants
*
cross over your eyelids.
You have never possessed anything
as deeply as this.
*
This is all you have owned
from the first outcry
through forever;
*
you can never be dispossessed.
*
- Derek Walcott
For My Daughter
When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.
When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.
- David Ignatow
More Than We Know
Windows of the building across the way
facing away from the sun,
are filled with golden light.
How can it be?
They are reflecting
light reflected from mine.
Could there be
accidental gifts
we give
without knowing it?
- Nina Mermey Klippel
Ozymandias of Egypt
*
I met a traveller from an antique land *
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone *
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, *
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown *
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command ******
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read *
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, *
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. *
And on the pedestal these words appear: *
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: *
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" *
Nothing beside remains: round the decay *
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, *
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- P. B. Shelley
Enlightenment
Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
and listen to the wind singing
in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing and
the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you
are right now, not who you’d
like to be. Not the saint you’re
striving to become, but the
being right there before you,
inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You’re already more and less
than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, look in, let go.
- John Welwood
Variation On The Word Sleep
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
- Margaret Atwood
praise song
to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. **** i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.
- Lucille Clifton
The Silence of the Stars
When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.
- David Wagoner
An Old Astronomer and His Pupil
Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.
Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,
And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.
But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and wiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.
You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight;
You will need them, mine observer, yet for many another night.
I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known.
You "have none but me," you murmur, and I "leave you quite alone"?
Well then, kiss me, -- since my mother left her blessing on my brow,
There has been a something wanting in my nature until now;
I can dimly comprehend it, -- that I might have been more kind,
Might have cherished you more wisely, as the one I leave behind.
I "have never failed in kindness"? No, we lived too high for strife,
Calmest coldness was the error which has crept into our life;
But your spirit is untainted, I can dedicate you still
To the service of our science: you will further it? you will!
There are certain calculations I should like to make with you,
To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true;
And remember, "Patience, Patience," is the watchword of a sage,
Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age.
I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap;
But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleep
So be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name;
See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame.
I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak;
Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak:
It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,
God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars.
- Sarah Williams (1837–1868)
There Is No One But Us
There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
nor a clean hand nor a pure heart
on the face of the earth,
but only us,
a generation comforting ourselves
with the notion that we have come at an awkward time,
that our innocent fathers are all dead
- as if innocence had ever been -
and our children busy and troubled,
and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
having each of us chosen wrongly,
made a false start, failed,
yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures,
and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.
- Annie Dillard
Song for The Parks
I
Where I rode my bike on hot days on the rough red road
Where my mother saw a rattlesnake as thick as her wrist
Where I jumped in the slimy duck-shit filled lake during the summer of confusion
Where we ran naked in the rain on a winter day, leaping over pokey branches
Where you hiked and became silent after I abandoned you
Where the father of our friend died suddenly of a heart attack
Where my grandfather put his boat into the Bay –
A white boat, with blue trim, he carved the oars himself.
In his white hat he would drift among the whitecaps,
Singing silent songs, pretending to be Irish.
We all thought he would die like this, drift out with the tide, like Saint Brendan.
Instead he died indoors by a window,
on top of a flower-print blanket, in November, laughing.
Where the land is ripped open by the water blasts of gold-miners.
Scars exposed to the sky. And tell me again, what were they rushing for?
Here, in fourth grade, I felt the first pangs of love.
No, I will not listen, I will go in anyways, I'll climb the fence,
flip off the Ranger, and I'll take the rich black mud
and make sculptures of shrunken heads with sharp shells for teeth
and stones for rolling eyes, with wild seaweed hair and tongues lolling out,
and leave them in a row of defiance for everyone to see.
II
Every Wednesday after school in 11th grade, we climbed the four and a half miles to Gunsight Rock. From there, we could see out across the Sonoma valley, past our small provincial city, to the distant, sparkling, Pacific. The fog came in, we got drunk on wildflowers, covered ourselves in mud, and we shouted, amazed at the richness of the land. We loved each other as men do.
Once, halfway up the ridge, I swam in an icy pool filled with Poison Oak branches. I became completely covered in a red rash, my fingers involuntarily scratched my face and crotch for weeks. Every scratch was a blessing, each finger shouting, "Yes, you were there! Yes, you are here!"
III
But I want to know, how do you close a redwood tree? By what door?
The invisible one the size of a man, that is wherever you stand in front of it?
And how do you close a meadow? Will you close the North gate or the South gate or the gate by the winding stream?
And how will you close a hillside? Will you close the wide gate at the base or the small wooden gate at the nape of the neck?
And what door will you close in a desert boulder?
We will not be barred from our Synagogues.
And the Zen Buddhists will not climb the wall
but become the whole park from the other side by a switch of perception
And this will fling open the doors of every redwood tree
And all will be singing in strange tones.
- Asa Horvitz
Song for The Parks
I
Where I rode my bike on hot days on the rough red road
Where my mother saw a rattlesnake as thick as her wrist
Where I jumped in the slimy duck-shit filled lake during the summer of confusion
Where we ran naked in the rain on a winter day, leaping over pokey branches
Where you hiked and became silent after I abandoned you
Where the father of our friend died suddenly of a heart attack
Where my grandfather put his boat into the Bay –
A white boat, with blue trim, he carved the oars himself.
In his white hat he would drift among the whitecaps,
Singing silent songs, pretending to be Irish.
We all thought he would die like this, drift out with the tide, like Saint Brendan.
Instead he died indoors by a window,
on top of a flower-print blanket, in November, laughing.
Where the land is ripped open by the water blasts of gold-miners.
Scars exposed to the sky. And tell me again, what were they rushing for?
Here, in fourth grade, I felt the first pangs of love.
No, I will not listen, I will go in anyways, I'll climb the fence,
flip off the Ranger, and I'll take the rich black mud
and make sculptures of shrunken heads with sharp shells for teeth
and stones for rolling eyes, with wild seaweed hair and tongues lolling out,
and leave them in a row of defiance for everyone to see.
II
Every Wednesday after school in 11th grade, we climbed the four and a half miles to Gunsight Rock. From there, we could see out across the Sonoma valley, past our small provincial city, to the distant, sparkling, Pacific. The fog came in, we got drunk on wildflowers, covered ourselves in mud, and we shouted, amazed at the richness of the land. We loved each other as men do.
Once, halfway up the ridge, I swam in an icy pool filled with Poison Oak branches. I became completely covered in a red rash, my fingers involuntarily scratched my face and crotch for weeks. Every scratch was a blessing, each finger shouting, "Yes, you were there! Yes, you are here!"
III
But I want to know, how do you close a redwood tree? By what door?
The invisible one the size of a man, that is wherever you stand in front of it?
And how do you close a meadow? Will you close the North gate or the South gate or the gate by the winding stream?
And how will you close a hillside? Will you close the wide gate at the base or the small wooden gate at the nape of the neck?
And what door will you close in a desert boulder?
We will not be barred from our Synagogues.
And the Zen Buddhists will not climb the wall
but become the whole park from the other side by a switch of perception
And this will fling open the doors of every redwood tree
And all will be singing in strange tones.
- Asa Horvitz
We Have Come to Be Danced
We have come to be danced
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.
We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.
We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
But the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.
We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shaking ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.
We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take ten giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.
We have come to be danced Where the kingdoms collide In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced! We have come.
- Jewel Mathieson
[To listen to Jewel recite this, go here and click on the Play button]
If You Knew
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
- Ellen Bass
Looking for Work
I’d been out of work for a month
and knew it was time to get going
on my job search. So I got out
of bed, gazed out the window, looked
for a job, saw nothing that interested
me, crawled under the covers again
and fell back to sleep.
An hour later, I got up, brewed
coffee, made it strong, the color
of wet road, then traveled a mile
with my throat until the pot was empty.
I didn’t go out at all the day
before but knew everything worth
missing was just outside my door
in the paper. Even with Monday
folded over with a crease through
noon, fifty cents seemed too
expensive for a day I basically
slept through.
The lead story reported a man
was shot just a few blocks
away, and though I hate guns,
I rifled through the rest of the paper,
tossed it on the floor then went
over to the refrigerator, even though
I don’t believe in miracles and opened
it. None was going to take place on
that day either: no food appeared
just an old piece of steak I cooked once,
that looked raw as last December.
With the temperature reaching
for 90º again and knowing
it shouldn’t reach for anything
beyond its grasp, I decided to get
dressed and walk over to St. James.
It’s a Catholic church but since
the saints inside are still concrete,
I like to go in on weekdays where
it’s cool, dark and empty. The strange
part is it feels like home. I’ve decided
it’s the candles who look like my
relatives. Irish. Each flame a jig,
lit up on Guinness instead of matches.
- Kevin Pilkington
The True Love
There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you
never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning
hand held out to you this way.
I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and
what we feel we are worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man who walked
every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind
and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water,
and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking
and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them,
and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that
calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not
come so grandly, so Biblically, but more subtly and intimately in
the face of the one you know you have to love,
so that when we finally step out of the boat toward them, we find
everything holds us, and everything confirms our courage, and if
you wanted to drown you could, but you don’t
because finally after all this struggle and all these years, you
don’t want to anymore, you’ve simply had enough of drowning,
and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk
across any territory and any darkness, however fluid and
however dangerous, to the take the one hand you know belongs
in yours.
- David Whyte
Piers Invents a Nigerian News-Bulletin
*
"Breakfast-time: the start;
Lunch-time: the middle;
Supper-time: the end."
*** Piers, aged four.
*
No time to go to bed, or to get up:
At supper-time the world falls over the cliff
And never knows it, presumably; at lunch
All the wide world stands level; and at breakfast:
Oh, the creation of all the days at once
In golden morning! Breakfast-time: the start!
*
Morning news: God created Today
Today, at seven twenty-three, with eggs,
Fanfares of bread, and jam, jubilee birds,
A conspicuous expanse of fancy sky,
And the sun, two brothers, parents, and a house,
Suddenly! from forever. Breakfast-time: the start.
*
Lunch-time: the middle. Bulletin: the sun
Seems to keep going up; one of the brothers
Walks and walks, and one gets angry. Sandwiches
Are an illimitable plateau. A fan
(Expected from the beginning of the world)
Evolves the wind of Paradise. Lunch, heat: the middle.
*
In the race of night and supper, God's night wins:
The sun goes out; the wind goes cool; dinner
Heats a few spots of table. Birds have been
Uncreated already. Invented insects
Disintegrate in shrieks. Brothers sag, worn,
And fade. Trees melt in sky. Supper: the end.
*
Breakfast-time; the start:
Lunch-time; the middle:
Supper-time: the end.
*** Do it again, God!
*
- David Knight
Our Time Is Now
Thank God our time is now,
when wrong comes up to face us everywhere,
never to leave us until we’ve taken the longest stride of soul humans ever took.
Events are now Soul-size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
**********- Christopher Fry
**********(last lines of his play, A Sleep of Prisoners, written at the end of World War II)
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
- Gil Scott-Heron
The Great Gil Scott-Heron, Poet And Musician, Has Died
by Daoud Tyler-Ameen
Gil Scott-Heron died Friday afternoon in New York, his book publisher reported. He was 62. The influential poet and musician is often credited with being one of the progenitors of hip-hop, and is best known for the spoken-word piece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."
Gil Scott-Heron Makes A Striking Return
Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949. He spent his early years in Jackson, Tenn., attended high school in The Bronx, and spent time at Pennsylvania's Lincoln University before settling in Manhattan. His recording career began in 1970 with the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which featured the first version of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The track has since been referenced and parodied extensively in pop culture.
Scott-Heron continued to record through the 1970s and early '80s, before taking a lengthy hiatus. He briefly returned to the studio for 1994's Spirits. That album featured the track "Message to the Messengers," in which Scott-Heron cautions the hip-hop generation that arose in his absence to use its newfound power responsibly. He has been cited as a key influence by many in the hip-hop community — such as rapper-producer Kanye West, who closed his platinum-selling 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with a track built around a sample of Scott-Heron's voice.
Scott-Heron struggled publicly with substance abuse in the 2000s, and spent the early part of the decade in and out of jail on drug possession charges. He began performing again after his release in 2007, and in 2010 released a new album, I'm New Here, to widespread critical acclaim.
© 2011 National Public Radio
I Think Continually of Those
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
***- Stephen Spender
I Knew a Woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek).
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).
- Theodore Roethke
Come, said my Soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning---as, first, I hear and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
- Walt Whitman
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
- Wilfred Owen
A Tendency to Shine
If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing with
more sooty knowledge.
No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.
God is in a mood to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you will be
a tendency to shine.
So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
This is no campfire song
to mindlessly
mantra yourself to sleep with.
Jump now into the space
between thoughts and
exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.
- Adyashanti
Blessing the Boats
(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it
will love your back
may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
- Lucille Clifton
bendición de los barcos
por Clifton Lucille
(En el puerto de Santa María)
puede la marea
que está entrando ahora mismo
el borde de nuestra comprensión
llevar a cabo lo
más allá de la cara del miedo
puedes besar
al viento y después aparte de él
seguro, confidiado de que te
vas a querer igual.
que puedes
abrir tus ojos al agua
ondeando el agua para siempre
y que en tu inocencia vas a
navegar a esto a aquello.
(Spanish translation by Ken Ireland)
Reading Chinese Poetry Before Dawn
Sleepless again,
I get up.
A cold rain
beasts at the windows.
Holding my coffee,
I ponder Tu Fu's
overturned wine glass.
At his window, snow,
twelve hundred years fallen;
under his hand,
black ink not yet dry.
"Letters are useless."
The poet is old, alone,
his woodstove is empty.
The fame of centuries
casts off no heat.
In his verse, I know,
is a discipline
lost to translation;
here, only the blizzard remains.
- Jane Hirshfield
___Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Thanks for you daily poems, Larry. Your post today and the clouds above inspired these few words:
Assurance
When clouds are
dark in the sky,
trees bending with
the howling wind,
is it delusional to
believe the sun
shines brilliantly
beyond the clouds?
This storm will pass
like others before.
___
In the Attic
There’s a half hour toward dusk when flies,
Trapped by the summer screens, expire
Musically in the dust of sills;
And ceilings slope toward remembrance.
The same crimson afternoons expire
Over the same few rooftops repeatedly;
Only being stored up for remembrance,
They somehow escape the ordinary.
Childhood is like that, repeatedly
Lost in the very longueurs it redeems.
One forgets how small and ordinary
The world looked once by dusklight from above…
But not the moment which redeems
The drowsy arias of flies—
And the chin settles onto palms above
Numbed elbows propped up on rotting sills.
- Donald Justice
Home to Roost
The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small -
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost - all
the same kind
at the same speed.
- Kay Ryan
The Night House
Every day the body works in the fields of the world
mending a stone wall
or swinging a sickle through the tall grass-
the grass of civics, the grass of money-
and every night the body curls around itself
and listens for the soft bells of sleep
But the heart is restless and rises
from the body in the middle of the night,
leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
with its thick, pictureless walls
to sit by herself at the kitchen table
and heat some milk in a pan.
And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
and goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
and opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
and roams from room to room in the dark,
darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.
And the soul is up on the roof
in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
singing a song about the wildness of the sea
until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,
resuming their daily colloquy,
talking to each other or themselves
even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body- that house of voices
sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle or its pen
to stare at the distance,
to listen to all its names being called
before bending again to its labor.
- Billy Collins
Well, the best literature can do is alter consciousness.
That worked for me, a lot. Thanks
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. -William C. Dement, professor of psychiatry (b. 1928)
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Anyone Can Sing
Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.
- William Ayot
Blessing
Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their
happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the
darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
- James Wright
The Return
Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces
of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language
to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear
your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they–like you–must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
- Geneen Marie Haugen
Great poem selection, Larry... Really wonderful. :-)
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Thanks for posting this extremely beautiful and relevant piece. I have had the good luck of meeting Geneen Marie through work that she does with her friend ,ecopsychologist and vision quest leader Bill Plotkin. She is an amazing writer and this piece gives us an excellent insight into her thought process. Where did you come across this at?Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
At Lake Scugog
1.
Where what I see comes to rest,
at the edge of the lake,
against what I think I see
and, up on the bank, who I am
maintains an uneasy truce
with who I fear I am,
while in the cabin’s shade the gap between
the words I said
and those I remember saying
is just wide enough to contain
the remains that remain
of what I assumed I knew.
2.
Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were
gingerly trades spots
with the person you are
and what I believe I believe
sits uncomfortably next to
what I believe.
When I promised I will always give you
what I want you to want,
you heard, or desired to hear,
something else. As, over and in the lake,
the cormorant and its image
traced paths through the sky.
- Troy Jollimore
The Wish to Be Generous
All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
- Wendell Berry
Ode To That Green Harmonica
Oh, how you made my heart weep
that full moon night in the mountain pines.
Your sound crying the tears
of hundreds of blues players
who wailed their losses to the night
and the distant stars
Your sound carried enough loneliness
to make the heavens moan
and rain for months.
Oh, you beautiful green harmonica.
Your shine worn down by sliding hands -
the hands easing out low breathy shimmers
caressing the empty places, the broken hearts
of lonely sweethearts
weeping In the night.
I pick you up like the marvelous treasure
you are - and gently kiss
your lips.
You ask only my breath,
my simple breath,
that makes you nearly shiver
out of my hand.
You are full to bursting
with sorrowful blues
falling in the darkness.
Your sound calls in the love sick cowboy,
the tired cook,
the railroad man too tired to go to bed,
the little child too alive
to go to sleep while your sounds
curl in his ears.
With all your sad moans
your green is still the greenest green
that ever a harmonica was - let someone else
try to find a greener green
than you.
That's it! You beautiful green harmonica.
That's it!
Maybe you once were black
with all the sorrows of the world.
Perhaps those darkening tones
easing from such tiny holes,
like sand through a sieve,
filtered out the hurtful parts.
You took only the honeyed leavings
of bleeding passion
and allowed them into the air.
And the trees heard!
Yes, the trees heard and gave you back
their beauty, their greenest green
of praising spring.
Oh, you beautiful green harmonica
Oh! Oh! Oh-hh!
- Doug von Koss
Buckeye
Heading up the Tuolomne
one early July evening
the steep slopes slant back and away
from the movement of water
a pale tawny boneyard of trees
stretches river bank to ridgeline.
The skeletal clatter of limbs
sours the day, this encounter
with so much death. In the narrows,
those dry sculpted shapes become clear.
Like a dream the trouble melting
in a comedy of error.
It is the buckeye, thousands strong
summer deciduous, proud, bare.
Other trees beginning to bloom and fruit,
watch the buckeye leaves curl in the heat,
wonder what’s wrong, as the miscreant tree
papers the ground with fandangos of
spiraled, sunburned currency.
The buckeye, clearly out of step,
its towering white panicles
coming too late in the season
and rivaling each bride’s bouquet.
November buckeye is still bare
and bent with fruit, leathery pears
that drape then crack then let go
the smooth amber seed the Pomo
made a mash of these and poured it
into the river to stun the fish
and carried the nub of the nut
around like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
January finds other trees napping,
while buckeye opens her monkey’s fist
of leaves, each little open hand gestures
hang on, I am here to tell you
the others are coming, in time,
all will be coming in good time.
- Penelope La Montagne
On the Nature of Things
The squawking crow
flies down from the redwood tree
to tell me
he is not a crow.
Not bird, not passerine bird
of the family Corvidae,
nor mind nor body
nor thing.
And not a crow.
In fact, he says,
he hasn't even been
discovered yet.
When I was young I dreamt
I climber marble stairs
toward a room that held
The Book of What Each Thing Is.
Golden light poured down those stairs
from a room so high
I could never see it.
From that book
I would learn
what is crow,
what is redwood,
what am I.
Crow tells me
the black of his wings
is deeper than any book.
Friends, there are hours
I have no greater grief,
no greater joy.
I will never know
what I am.
Crow
flies down often
to tell me so.
- Len Anderson
Dead Pets
They come between dreams
soft focus tails wagging,
whiskers electric.
The ones we have named.
Wide-eyed refugees
we carried home in cars
or in arms curled around
trembling ribs.
They return like blood
to fill again a thick vein
on the surface of sensation.
The tactile plasma
of Patch, Lucky, and Tigger
still checking our pulse.
Those we once called mine,
understand
it is we who were once theirs.
They see us now
as children see ghosts
and other lost souls.
- Eric Ashford
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun’s brass and even
in the moonlight, but I can’t hear
anything, I can’t see anything -----
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,
the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker -----
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.
Ans so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing -----
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet ----
all of it
happening
beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in dirt
swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?
One morning,
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.
- Mary Oliver
Snake
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
- D.H. Lawrence
Taormina, 1923
The Barefoot Boy
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
Blessings on thee, little man,Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art,—the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,—
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
Of the wild-flower’s time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole’s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp’s cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
- John Greenleaf Whittier