Female Poets

A Cloak

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

Denise Levertov
English
1923 – 1997

 

‘For there’s more enterprise
in walking naked.’
—W. B. Yeats

And I walked naked
from the beginning

breathing in
my life,
breathing out
poems,

arrogant in innocence.

But of the song-clouds my breath made
in cold air

a cloak has grown,
white and,
where here a word
there another
froze, glittering,
stone-heavy.

A mask I had not meant
to wear, as if of frost,
covers my face.
Eyes looking out,
a longing silent at song’s core.

October in New Zealand

In honor of New Zealand Labour Day, we present this tribute to the season.

Jessie Mackay
Kiwi
1864 – 1938

 

O June has her diamonds, her diamonds of sheen,
Meet for a queen’s neck, if Death had e’er a queen!
June has her blue days, jewels of delight,
Set in the ivory of Alp-land white,—
But October, October’s the lady o’ the year!

O January’s garland is redder than the rose,
And the wine-red ruby of January glows
All the way to madness and half the way to sin,
When sleep is in the poppy and fire is in the whin!
But October, October’s the lady o’ the year!

October will ride in a mantle o’ the vair,
With the flower o’ the quince in her dew-wet hair;
October will ride to the gates of the day,
With the bluebells ringing on her maiden way;—
For October, October’s the lady o’ the year!

tango

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 75th birthday.

Ntozake Shange
American
1948 – 2018

 

loose in the brush pines
my grandfather farmed
learned yiddish to better wash windows
the french windows
the sixteen paned windows
the terraced windows
of a restricted town
he made violins of pine
varnished them tuned them
let music carry his daughters
out of the town
away from the farm that
burned down
scrubby pines brush pines
obliterate the ruins of the barn
the pine needles scratch the air
each time my father wipes the
tears from his cheeks
but not from the windows
there were never streaks
on the windows.

The Children of God Have No Roof

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.

María Teresa Sánchez
Nicaraguan
1918 – 1994

 

The children of God have no roof,
and hungry, they wander like specters;
and they are thirsty, and find no shade for their sun.
The pride of small, despotic human gods

rages over them,
who break the harmony of the wind with their noises.

Sow the deserts with wheat,
sweeten the water of the seas;
appease the wrath of God:
he who has built the world
can destroy it.

The Harvest Rain

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.

Maria James
Welsh
1793 – 1868

 

Shine out once more, thou radiant sun,
With noon-day splendours bright!
Break through the clouds which veil thy beams!
Diffuse thy cheering light!

Creation, deluged, weeps in showers;
The dripping flocks repine;
The birds are silent on the boughs;
Shine out, — all glorious shine!

No more they grind; — the sithe, the rake,
Are laid as useless by,
While many a wistful look is turn’d
Towards the western sky.

Wake from the north, ye slumb’ring wind!
Dispel the thick’ning gloom!
Lighten with smiles the brow of care, —
With all your influence come.

The Same Questions

We present this work in honor of Gandhi Jiyanti.

Arundhathi Subramaniam
Indian
b. 1973

 

Again and again the same questions, my love,
those that confront us
and vex nations,
or so they claim –

how to disarm
when we still hear
the rattle of sabre,
the hiss of tyre
from the time I rode my red cycle
all those summers ago
in my grandmother’s back-garden
over darting currents of millipede,
watching them,
juicy, bulging, with purpose,
flatten in moments
into a few hectic streaks of slime,

how to disarm,
how to choose
mothwing over metal,
underbelly over claw,
how to reveal raw white nerve fibre
even while the drowsing mind still clutches
at carapace and fang,

how to believe
this gift of inner wrist
is going to make it just a little easier
for a whale to sing again in a distant ocean
or a grasshopper to dream
in some sunwarmed lull of savannah.