Friends will quickly leave you Slight you and deceive you, Or will not believe you, If you have a wrong. Those who hurt will hate you, Enemies will slate you, And with crams disrate you, If you have a wrong. But if you are righted Those who coolly slighted Will be so delighted, Said so all along. But you then can show them That you would forego them, As too well you know them Since you’ve had a wrong. But your friends, God bless them I Take their hands and press them, You’ll cot have to guess them If you’ve had a wrong.
Sad men frighten birds away. Down to their pensive foreheads descend the clouds and dissolve into an opaque drizzle. Flowers languish in the gardens of the sad men. Their precipices tempt death. Whereas the women that are within a woman are all born at the same time in front of the sad eyes of the sad men. The woman vessel again opens her belly and offers the sad man her redeeming milk. The woman child kisses with fervor his paternal, desolate widower’s hands. And she who walks silently in the house shines his black hours and patches up all the holes in his breast. There is another that lends to the sad man her two hands as if they were wings. But sad men are deaf to their music. There is no lonelier woman then, more sadly lonely, than she who wants to love a sad man.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 120th birthday.
Rose Auslander German 1901 – 1988
We came home without roses they remained abroad our garden lies entombed within the burial ground so many things have changed into many things we have become thorns in the eyes of strangers
We present this work in honor of the 60th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Anne Wilkinson Canadian 1910 – 1961
Willow weep, let the lake lap up your green trickled tears. Water, love, lip the hot roots, cradle the leaf; Turn a new moon on your tongue, water, lick the deaf rocks, With silk of your pebble-pitched song, water, wimple the beach; Water, wash over the feet of the summer-bowed trees, Wash age from the face of the stone.
I am a hearer of water; My ears hold the sound and the feel of the sound of it mortally. My skin is in love with lake water. My skin is in love and it sings in the arms of its lover, My skin is the leaf of the willow, My nerves are the roots of the weeping willow tree.
My blood is a clot in the stone, The blood of my heart is fused to a pit in the rock; The lips of my lover can wear away stone, My lover can free the blocked heart; The leaf and the root and the red sap will run with lake water, The arms of my lover will carry me home to the sea.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 60th birthday.
Lisa Bellear Australian 1961 – 2006
Weep for this wounded desperate soul that never seems to heal, alone, vocalising to any passer by. Uncomfortable for some, they turn away, but that won’t stop her swaying, or mend her destructive pain
Pray for this tired old and embittered lady who fought courageously against the colonisers classified as ‘tribal’ whose love across the racial lines meant government sanctioned interference: the Bullyman, welfare, local school teacher – informant, would not relent till Ruby was removed
Three long years of hiding from the tentacles of institutionalised racism, till a moments lapse and then she’s gone Ruby’s gone, like she never existed, nor was ever loved. Rocking to and fro, she still dreams of little Ruby and of that fateful day and wonders what their life could’ve been like without this government sanctioned cruelty
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 270th birthday.
Judith Sargent Murray American 1751 – 1820
When will these rude tumultuous clamours cease, When shall we hear the genial voice of peace; My tir’d soul is sick of these alarms, This vain parade, this constant din of arms. I wish, devoutly wish, for some retreat, Where but the shepherd’s pipe my ear may greet, Where I may calmly hail the rising day, On life’s eventful threshold while I stray. I would in its variety enjoy, The mental feast I would my hours employ, To cull the flowers of wisdom as they grow, To reap the fruits which love and truth bestow.
But ah! Alas! On a rough Ocean tost, To all the bliss of social pleasures lost; My little back by winds of passion driv’n, Blown to, and fro, by each opinion giv’n; Sees in perspective no auspicious shore
Which can its safety, or its hopes restore; Terrifick visions in succession rise, A host of fears the trembling soul surprise.
And can it be, will dark vindictive rage, ‘Gainst helpless towns revengeful battle wage, When far removed from the hostile scene When cities rise, when Oceans roll between
Must Glous’ter though obscure be doom’d to feel, The British thunder, and the British steel, Forbid it British valour, British grace, And spare so little, so remote a place.
Kisses don’t wither like the flowers of the malinche tree, hard shells of seeds don’t grow over my arms; I’m always flowering with this internal rain, like the green patios in May and I laugh because I love the wind and the clouds and the singing birds that pass overhead, even though I’m entangled with memories, covered with ivy like old walls, I go on believing in the secret whisperings, the strength of wild horses, the winged message of gulls.
I swear to you, Love, by your arrows, And by your powerful holy flame, I care not if by one I-m maimed, My heart burned, wasted by the other: However far through times past or coming, There never was nor will be woman Whomever of them you wish to name, Could know such sharpness, such devouring:
For there-s a virtue born from suffering, That dims and conquers the sense of pain, So that it-s barely felt, seems scarcely hurting. No! This, that torments soul and body again, This is the real fear presaging my dying: What if my fire be only straw and flame?
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