The wine that courses through my vein
Has drowned my heart and in its train
I navigate the endless blue
I am a ship without a crew
Forgetfulness descends like rain.
I am a just discovered star
That floats across the empyrean —
How new and strange its contours are!
O voyage taken to the sun
An unfamiliar yet persistent hum
The background to my night’s become.
My heart has left my life behind,
The world of Shape and
Form I’ve crossed,
I am saved I am lost
Into the unknown am tossed,
A name without a past to find.
Rise up and look at the mountain, from
where the wind, the sun, the water arrive.
Thou, who determines the course of
rivers, thou who scatters the flight of
your soul.
Rise up. Look at your hands. Join
hands with your brothers, together
in blood we go. Now is the time that
can be tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Deliver us from the men of
misery. Take us to your kingdom of justice and
justice. Blow like the wind the gorge’s flower.
Clean the fire
in the barrel of my gun.
Thy will be done
Here on Earth. Give us your strength and
your courage in combat.
Blow like the wind the field’s daffodil.
Clean fire in the barrel of my gun.
Rise up and look at your hands. Join
hands with your brothers, together
in blood we live,
now and at the hour of
our death. Amen. We live. Amen.
We present this work in honor of the International Day of the Girl.
Audre Lorde American 1934 – 1992
I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his thumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before morning
and momma’s in the bedroom
with the door closed.
I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I die before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth about me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma’s in the bedroom
with the door closed.
Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma’s in the bedroom
with the door closed.
To the right
of our hill
there’s a shining well
full of water.
Last year
summer covered it
with green mango blossom.
The green tempted
a calf,
which fell in
and drowned.
Since then
people have stopped
drinking from that well.
Now, like a thief,
I bathe in it
at night.
I cup my hands
and drink from it
at night.
But the water
doesn’t quench
my thirst, my desire.
In the dark depths
of the well
there are shadows
still waiting for
the girls
who’d slung a rope
on its hook
but never came back
to draw water.
The well’s darkness
is waiting
for the moment
when I’ll have
the courage
to stretch out my hands
and drink its water
in broad daylight.
In honor of World Teachers’ Day, we present this work that is often studied in American high schools, written by a poet who made his living as a teacher.
Robert Frost American 1874 – 1963
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
In honor of German Unity Day, we present this work by one of Germany’s greatest modern writers.
Günter Grass German 1927 – 2015
The shoes are at the bottom.
They are afraid of a beetle
On the way out,
Of a penny on the way back,
Of a beetle and a penny on which they might tread
Till it impresses itself.
At the top is the home of the headgear.
Take heed, by wary, not headstrong.
Incredible feathers,
What was the bird called,
Where did its eyes roll
When it knew that its wings were too gaudy?
The white balls asleep in the pockets
Dream of moths.
Here a button is missing,
In this belt the clasp grows weary.
Doleful silk,
Asters and other inflammable flowers,
Autumn becoming a dress.
Every Sunday filled with flesh
And the salt of folded linen.
Before the wardrobe falls silent, turns into wood,
A distant relation of pine-trees,—
Who will wear the coat
One day when you’re dead?
Who move his arm in the sleeve,
Anticipate every movement?
Who will turn up the collar,
Stop in front of the pictures
And be alone under the windy cloche?
Awaken them; they are knobs of sound
that seem to melt and crumple up
like some jellyfish of tropical seas,
torn from sleep with a hand lined by prophecies.
Listen hard; their male, gaunt world sprawls the page
like rows of tree trunks reeking in the smoke
of ages, the branches glazed and dead
as though longing to make up with the sky,
but having lost touch with themselves
were unable to find themselves, hold meaning.
And yet, down the steps into the water at Varanasi,
where the lifeless bodies seem to grow human,
the shaggy heads of word-buds move back and forth
between the harsh castanets of the rain
and the noiseless feathers of summer –
aware that their syllables’ overwhelming silence
would not escape the hearers now, and which
must remain that mysterious divine path
guarded by drifts of queer, quivering banyans:
a language of clogs over cobbles, casting
its uncertain spell, trembling sadly into mist.
In honor of Rosh Hashanah, we present this work by one of the 20th century’s great Jewish poets.
Nellie Sachs German 1891 – 1970
When the day empties itself
In the twilight,
When the imageless time begins,
The lonely voices join together—
The animals are nothing other than the hunting
Or the hunted—
The flowers no more than fragrance—
When everything becomes nameless as in the beginning—
You go under the catacombs of Time,
Which open for those that are near the end—
There where the heart buds grow—
Into the dark inwardliness
You sink downward—
Already past death
Which is only a windy passageway—
And freezing from going out
You open your eyes
Where a new star
Has already left its reflection—
Poets Corner 