Lovely spring poem by Emily Dickinson.
VI. THE ROBIN.
The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.
The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.
The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.
The welfare state… this is such a beautiful idea. The welfare of us all, fare thee well, and if forever, still forever fare thee well. The mother explains how we keep each other rolling by buying bread, a softball, coffee and rosin from our neighbour; an act that means the other is able to buy something they need. No trickle down nonsense where rich folk hoard their hundreds of thousands, millions and steal from the working people through wages that are far lower than the work is worth. Wage theft. In this poem without preaching Soto shows how people keep the neighbourhood alive and kicking, how people set up their local economy and how varied their buying is: softball, book, broom, movie ticket and crayons. And chicken. Hmmm, chicken.
BY GARY SOTO
I love to be called for dinner.
Spot goes out and I go in and the lights
in the kitchen go on and the dark,
which also has a body like a cloud’s,
leans lightly against the house.
William Matthews
Robert Louis Stevenson on the moon:
THE MOON has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
Chicken Pig
BY JENNIFER MICHAEL HECHT
It’s like being lost
in the forest, hungry, with a
plump live chicken in your cradling
arms: you want to savage the bird,
but you also want the eggs.
You go weak on your legs.
What’s worse, what you need
most is the companionship,
but you’re too hungry to know that.
That is something you only know after
you’ve been lost a lot and always,
eventually, alit upon
your bird; consumed her
before you’d realized what
a friend she’d been, letting you
sleep-in late on the forest floor
though she herself awoke
at the moment of dawn
and thought of long-lost
rooster voices quaking
the golden straw. She
looks over at you, sleeping,
and what can I tell you, she loves
you, but like a friend.
Eventually, when lost
in a forest with a friendly chicken
you make a point of emerging
from the woods together,
triumphant; her, fat with bugs,
you, lean with berries.
Still, while you yet wander,
you can not resist telling her
your joke:
Guy sees a pig with three legs,
asks the farmer, What gives?
Farmer says, That pig woke
my family from a fire, got us all out.
Says the guy, And lost the leg thereby?
Nope, says the farmer,
Still had all four when he took
a bullet for me when I had
my little struggle with the law.
Guy nods, So that’s where
he lost his paw? Farmer shakes
it off, says, Nah, we fixed him up.
A pause, guy says, So how’d he lose
the leg? Farmer says, Well, hell,
a pig like that
you don’t eat all at once.
Chicken squints. Doesn’t think
it’s funny.
Awake in a giant night
is where I am
Anne Waldman
More brilliant bits in that poem:
I look out the window, there is night
I sit in this lighted room knowing this night
Night! Night! I wish you’d go so I could go
to the post office, the bank, the supermarket
Why aren’t they open at night? I wonder
Then realize I’m not the only person who’s
considered in the grand scope of daily living.
“those things
which yo so laughingly call
hands are in fact two
brown butterflies fluttering
across the pleasure
they give my body”
.
— Nikki Giovanni ”The Butterfly
.
.
NEW and USED: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=nikki+giovanni&sts=t
Red is the color of a lot of lollipops,
Orange is any orange on a tree.
Yellow’s the color of a bag of lemon drops,
Green is a piece of seaweed in the sea.
Blue is the color of the sky in summertime
Indigo is a siamese cat’s eyes.
Violet’s the color of a flow’r in wintertime.
These are the colors of the rainbow skies.
There is a beautiful land
Where all your dreams come true;
It’s all tied up in a rainbow,
All shiny and new;
But it’s not easy to find
No matter what you do.
It’s not on top of a mountain
Or beneath the deep blue sea
Or in london zoo or in timbuktoo,
Or in timbuckthree.
And if you travelled the world
From china to peru,
There’s no beautiful land on the chart.
An explorer could not begin
To discover it’s origin
For the beautiful land is in your heart.
Beautiful land by Nina Simone
Written by Anthony Newley, Leslie Bricusse
To a life happily lived and with great strength. For my sweet friend and her wife, her best friend, her beloved.
Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality.
Emily Dickinson.
— Woman, bisexual, poet, white, affluent, introvert.
Walt Whitman was against slavery but held “the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should not vote.” He believed all religions to be equally important. He was a supporter of temperance, the movement to set limits to drinking alcohol. White, lower middle class, I think.
Walt Whitman, diary entry on Bumble-Bees.
MAY-MONTH… I am out just after sunrise, and down towards the creek.
The lights, perfumes, melodies—the blue birds, grass birds and robins, in every direction—
For undertones, a neighboring wood-pecker tapping his tree, and the distant clarion of chanticleer.
Then the fresh earth smells—the colors, the delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective. The bright green of the grass has receiv’d an added tinge from the last two days’ mildness and moisture.
Later.— But for the last two days it has been the great wild bee, the humble-bee, or “bumble,” as the children call him. As I walk, or hobble, from the farm-house down to the creek, I traverse the before-mention’d lane, fenced by old rails, with many splits, splinters, breaks, holes, &c., … Up and down and by and between these rails, they swarm and dart and fly in countless myriads.
As I wend slowly along, I am often accompanied with a moving cloud of them. They play a leading part in my morning, midday or sunset rambles, and often dominate the landscape in a way I never before thought of—fill the long lane, not by scores or hundreds only, but by thousands.
Large and vivacious and swift, with wonderful momentum and a loud swelling perpetual hum, varied now and then by something almost like a shriek, they dart to and fro, in rapid flashes, chasing each other, …
As I write, I am seated under a big wild-cherry tree—the warm day temper’d by partial clouds and a fresh breeze, neither too heavy nor light—and here I sit long and long, envelop’d in the deep musical drone of these bees, flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about me by hundreds—big fellows with light yellow jackets, great glistening swelling bodies, stumpy heads and gauzy wings—humming their perpetual rich mellow boom.
How it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; the open air, the rye-fields, the apple orchards…
…my spirit at peace. (Yet the anniversary of the saddest loss and sorrow of my life is close at hand.)
Almost every bird I notice has a special time in the year—sometimes limited to a few days—when it sings its best; and now is the period of these russet-backs.
In 1994 Nelson Mandela read anti-apartheid’s poet Ingrid Jonker’s poem out aloud during his address at the opening of the first democratic parliament.
She was one of my dad’s favourite poets and he read us her work in ‘t Afrikaans when we were kids. The English translation, slightly changed by me, is at the bottom.
Die kind is nie dood nie
die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy moeder
wat Afrika skreeu skreeu die geur
van vryheid en heide
in die lokasies van die omsingelde hart
Die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy vader
in die optog van die generasies
wat Afrika skreeu skreeu die geur
van geregtigheid en bloed
in die strate van sy gewapende trots
Die kind is nie dood nie
nòg by Langa nòg by Nyanga
nòg by Orlando nòg by Sharpville
nòg by die polisiestasie in Philippi
waar hy lê met ‘n koeël deur sy kop
Die kind is die skaduwee van die soldate
op wag met gewere sarasene en knuppels
die kind is teenwoordig by alle vergaderings en wetgewings
die kind loer deur die vensters van huise en in die harte
van moeders
die kind wat net wou speel in die son by Nyanga is orals
die kind wat ‘n man geword het trek deur die ganse Afrika
die kind wat ‘n reus geword het reis deur die hele wêreld
Sonder ‘n pas
.
Maart 1960
The child is not dead no
The child waves his fists at his mother
Who shouts Afrika shouts the scent
Of freedom and of heather
In the spaces of the beleaguered heart
The child waves his fists at his father
in the march of generations
who shouts Afrika shouts the breath
of justice and blood
in the streets of his ferocious dignity
The child is not dead no
not at Langa nor at Nyanga
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Philippi
where he lies with a bullet through his head
The child is the shadow of the soldiers
on guard with rifles armoured cars and batons
the child is present at all assemblies and treaties
the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts
of mothers
this child who just wanted to go play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child grown to a man treks through all Africa
the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world
Without a pass
.
March 1960
Anti-apartheid poet Antjie Krog as high school student wrote a famous poem that caused great commotion at the time:
Loosely translated by myself.
Look, I will build me a land
Where skin doesn’t matter not at all…
Just your mind and mine
Where no goat face in the halls of parliament
can never not ever spook to keep things
permanently
cramped
[…[
where black and white, hand on hand
may bring peace and love
to my beautiful land.
Kyk, ek bou vir my ‘n land
Kyk, ek bou vir my ‘n land
Waar ‘n vel niks tel nie,
Net jou verstand.
Waar geen bokgesig in ’n parlement
kan spook om dinge permanent
verkramp te hou nie.
Waar ek jou kan liefhê
langs jou in die gras kan lê
sonder om in ’n kerk ‘ja’ te sê.
Waar ons snags met kitare sing
en vir mekaar wit jasmyne bring.
Waar ek jou nie gif hoef te voer
as ’n vreemde duif in my hare koer.
Waar geen skeihof
my kinders se oë sal verdof.
Waar swart en wit hand aan hand
vrede en liefde kan bring
in my mooi land.
Black, mixed race poet Bessie Head, from South Africa and settled in Botswana.
“Where the Wind Don’t Blow”
My home is a swagger and a shrug
You know:
When you get a smack in the face
And the pain don’t hurt: You are the master…
Awesome poetry from all over. 