The negro speaks of rivers

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

The little mute boy

The little boy was looking for his voice.

(The king of the crickets had it.)

In a drop of water

the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;

I will make a ring of it

so that he may wear my silence

on his little finger

9.

there are so many tictoc

clocks everywhere telling people

what toctic time it is for

tictic instance five toc minutes toc

past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does

not get out of order nor do

its hands a little jerking move

over numbers slowly

The Masque of Anarchy

Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

The Call of the Open

Which yet joined not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

(Picture: Moon light sonata, Basuki Abdullah)

Black flag

When I die
let the black rag fly
raven falling
from the sky.

Let the black flag lie
on bones and skin
that long last night
as I enter in.

I have seen criminals & whores

I have seen criminals & whores
& spoken with them. Now I inquire
If you believe  them made as now they are
To drag their rags in blood & mire
Preordained, an evil race?

You to whom all men are prey
Have made them what they are today.

Louise Michel

(Picture: untitled, Zdislav Beksinski)

I’m Corrupt

I’m corrupt

As corrupt as you could have wished

I’m corrupt to the marrow of my bones

I suffer from an incurable disease

Fluttering in my brain

Gnawing at my bones and offering me doubt

Pain, unhappiness

I walk with the weight of my guilt

Through streets punctuated with churches

Knowing right from wrong at last and doing wrong

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

    enough

to truly consecrate the hour.

I am much too small in this world, yet not small

    enough

to be to you just object and thing,

dark and smart.

I want my free will and want it accompanying

the path which leads to action;

and want during times that beg questions,

where something is up,

to be among those in the know,

or else be alone.

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

(Picture: Flower clouds, Odilon Redon)

La espera

Pero si tú vienes,
No habrá derrota en esta tierra,
Cada noche te recibo de cuerpo entero,
Rasgo las gasas oscuras que te cubren
Y evaden los ojos cautelosos de los guardias.
Ahora estás desnuda ante mis ojos,
Todo lo iluminas,
Eres un sol convaleciente que sigiloso
Estira sus brazos y abre las rejas de la noche.

Tu cuerpo navega en mi sueño.
No son tranquilas estas aguas . . .
Tiembla mi nave . . .

Quixotic Orwell

Orwell can only be understood as an essentially quixotic man...He defended, passionately and as a matter of principle, unpopular causes. Often without regard to reason he would strike out against anything which offended his conceptions of right, justice and decency, yet, as many who crossed lances with him had reason to know, he could be a very chivalrous opponent, impelled by a sense of fair play that would lead to public recantation of accusations he had eventually decided were unfair. In his own way he was a man of the left, but he attacked its holy images as fervently as he did those of the right. And however much he might on occasion find himself in uneasy and temporary alliance with others, he was - in the end - as much a man in isolation as Don Quixote. His was the isolation of every man who seeks the truth diligently, no matter how unpleasant its implications may be to others or even to himself.

George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit : A Study of George Orwell

(Picture: Don Quixote, Gustave Dore)

Live blindly and upon the hour

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers.

Trumbull Stickney 

(Picture: The storm, Wojciech Siudmak)

A Shropshire Lad, II

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

Present Eternity

From my window I observe the traffic –
Cars parked in the void
Or speed up in order
To catch themselves returning.
The world seems indefinable, dim
As if I were blinded by the steam
From some distant cauldron
Where the evil of creation
Is stewing in its own juice.
The infatuation bodies used to provoke –
Where has the infatuation gone?
How can a wounded memory
Count absences?
Has the content of life changed
Or does my person no longer offer
Sufficient future
For life to contain me?

On the Term of Exile

No need to drive a nail into the wall

To hang your hat on;

When you come in, just drop it on the chair

No guest has sat on.

Don’t worry about watering the flowers—

In fact, don’t plant them.

You will have gone back home before they bloom,

And who will want them?

Pois que nada que dure

Pois que nada que dure, ou que, durando,

Valha, neste confuso mundo obramos,
E o mesmo útil para nós perdemos
            Connosco, cedo, cedo,
O prazer do momento anteponhamos
À absurda cura do futuro, cuja
Certeza única é o mal presente
            Com que o seu bem compramos.
Amanhã não existe. Meu somente
É o momento, eu só quem existe
Neste instante, que pode o derradeiro
            Ser de quem finjo ser.

Fernando Pessoa

Nothing short of complete victory

It is not for this little moment of time we are fighting, not for our own little bodies and their warmth; it is for all those who come after, for all times. Oh, men, for the love of them don't turn up another stone on their heads, don't help to blacken the sky. If we can shake that white-faced monster with the bloody lips that has sucked the lives out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since the world began, if we have not the hearts of men to stand against it, breast to breast and eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry for mercy, it will go on sucking life, and we shall stay forever where we are, less than the very dogs.

John Galsworthy, Strife

(Picture: Wild pilgrimage, Lynd Ward)

Modern School

I would like to call the attention of my readers to this idea: All the value of education rests in the respect for the physical, intellectual, and moral will of the child. Just as in science no demonstration is possible save by facts, just so there is no real education save that which is exempt from all dogmatism, which leaves to the child itself the direction of its effort, and confines itself to the seconding of its effort. Now, there is nothing easier than to alter this purpose, and nothing harder than to respect it. Education is always imposing, violating, constraining; the real educator is he who can best protect the child against his (the teacher's) own ideas, his peculiar whims; he who can best appeal to the child's own energies.
[…]

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,