I'd like to use this thread to share a few poems and poets I admire, for their politics as well as their skill. I know poetry isn't much of a thing now, but please post any of your favourites here too.
"We were not to notice
That in the air
There was a sour odour
Leaking
As if from a refinery
Upwind
It was a stench of sulphur
Or worn dollar bills
Of half-digested steak
Belched
Through false smiles
At the poor."
Tom Wayman, The Face of Jack Munro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MatAvedLgNo
The Interrogation of the Good - Bertolt Brecht
Step forward: we hear
That you are a good man.
You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider your personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend.
Are you also a good friend of the good people?
Hear us then: we know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration of your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.
That Tom Wayman piece? Good one. I was there. Still stings.
Shine, Perishing Republic
https://poemanalysis.com/robinson-jeffers/shine-perishing-republic
'Shine, Perishing Republic' by Robinson Jeffers is a clever and multifaceted poem that describes the inevitable decay and destruction of America."
Jeffers saw in 1925 what some still can't see even though its arrived reality now stares them square in the face.
Thanks for this Mobo. A great thread idea. Just this afternoon I was ruminating about how this board seemed stuck in a few topic areas. There are so many more topic areas that used to be really active and also made the board a lot more fun than it is today.
Anyway, here's my contribution; a well known poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. i love the in you face counter culture defiant tone.
THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Langston Hughes:
Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.’)
Say who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek
And finding only the same old stupid plan.
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In that Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a ‘homeland of the free.’
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again
The land that never has been yet
And yet must be the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plough in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers,
The mountains and the endless plain
All, all the stretch of these great green states
And make America again!
And a Canadian great, Archibald Lampman:
Oh deep-eyed brothers was there ever here,
Or is there now, or shall there sometime be
Harbour or any rest for such as we,
Lone thin-cheeked mariners, that aye must steer
Our whispering barks with such keen hope and fear
Toward misty bournes across the coastless sea,
Whose winds are songs that ever gust and flee,
Whose shores are dreams that tower but come not near.
Yet we perchance, for all that flesh and mind
Of many ills be marked with many a trace,
Shall find this life more sweet more strangely kind,
Than they of that dim-hearted earthly race,
Who creep firm-nailed upon the earth's hard face,
And hear nor see not, being deaf and blind.
Always loved Lampman. Really a master of the Petrarchan sonnet.
"Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit"
Grapefruit
Bathing suit
Chew a little Juicy Fruit
Wash away the night
Drive-in
Guzzle gin
Commit a little mortal sin
It's good for the soul
And oh, it gets so damn lonely
When you're on the plane all alone
And if I had the money, Honey
I'd strap you in beside me
And never ever leave you
Leave you at home all alone and crying
Ten speed
No need
My pick-up gets me where I please
Chuggin' down the street
But I'll be leavin'
In a little while
So close your eyes and I'll
I'll be back real soon
And if I had the money, Honey
I'd strap you in beside me
And never ever leave you
Leave you at home all alone and crying
Grapefruit
Bathing suit
Chew a little Juicy Fruit
Wash away the night
Yeah, You chew a little Juicy Fruit
It's good for your soul
RIP Jimmy
"Peanut Butter Conspiracy"
Lookin' back at my hard luck days
I really do have to laugh
Workin' in a dive for twenty-six dollars
Spendin' it all on draft
We were hungry hard luck heroes
Tryin' just to stay alive
So we'd go down to the corner grocery
This is how we'd survive.
Who's gonna steal the peanut butter
I'll get a can of sardines
Runnin' up and down the aisles of the Mini-Mart
Stickin' food in our jeans
We never took more than we could eat
There was plenty left on the racks
We all swore if we ever got rich
We would pay the Mini-Mart back
Yes Sir, yes Sir
We would pay the Mini-Mart back.
It was a two man operation
Had it all down on a note
Ricky would watch the big round mirror
And I'd fill up my coat
Then we'd head for the check-out aisle
With a lemon and a bottle of beer
Into the car got to make it on home
'Cause supper time is gettin' near.
I guess every good picker has had some hard times
I have had my share
It's really kinda funny to laugh at it now
But I don't wanna go back there
So every now and then when I'm in a grocery
I'll take a little but not much
'Cause you never know when the hard times will hit ya
And I don't want to lose my touch.
Dirge
by Kenneth Fearing
1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1;
bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow—
O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk-upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack?
O, fellow with a will who won't take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails—
Denouement to denouement, he took a personal pride in the certain, certain way he lived his own, private life,
but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless, the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called; nevertheless, the radio broke,
And twelve o'clock arrived just once too often,
just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath,
just one too many,
And wow he died as wow he lived,
going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired,
zowie did he live and zowie did he die,
With who the hell are you at the corner of his casket, and where the hell we going on the right-hand silver knob, and who
the hell cares walking second from the end with an American Beauty wreath from why the hell not,
Very much missed by the circulation staff of the New York Evening Post; deeply, deeply mourned by the B.M.T.,
Wham, Mr. Roosevelt; pow, Sears Roebuck; awk, big dipper; bop, summer rain;
Bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
BY Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Al Purdy's most famous poem:
The Country North of Belleville
Bush land scrub land –
Cashel Township and Wollaston
Elzevir McClure and Dungannon
green lands of Weslemkoon Lake
where a man might have some
opinion of what beauty
is and none deny him
for miles –
Yet this is the country of defeat
where Sisyphus rolls a big stone
year after year up the ancient hills
picknicking glaciers have left strewn
with centuries’ rubble
backbreaking days
in the sun and rain
when realization seeps slow in the mind
without grandeur or self-deception in
noble struggle
of being a fool –
A country of quiescence and still distance
a lean land
not like the fat south
with inches of black soil on
earth’s round belly –
And where the farms are
it’s as if a man stuck
both thumbs in the stony earth and pulled
it apart
to make room
enough between the trees
for a wife
and maybe some cows and
room for some
of the more easily kept illusions –
And where the farms have gone back
to forest
are only soft outlines
shadowy differences –
Old fences drift vaguely among the trees
a pile of moss-covered stones
gathered for some ghost purpose
has lost meaning under the meaningless sky
– they are like cities under water
and the undulating green waves of time
are laid on them –
This is the country of our defeat
and yet
during the fall plowing a man
might stop and stand in a brown valley of the furrows
and shade his eyes to watch for the same
red patch mixed with gold
that appears on the same
spot in the hills
year after year
and grow old
plowing and plowing a ten-acre field until
the convolutions run parallel with his own brain –
And this is a country where the young
leave quickly
unwilling to know what their fathers knew
or think the words their mothers do not say –
Herschel Monteagle and Faraday
lakeland rockland and hill country
a little adjacent to where the world is
a little north of where the cities are and
sometime
we may go back there
to the country of our defeat
Wollaston Elzevir and Dungannon
and Weslemkoon lake land
where the high townships of Cashel
McClure and Marmora once were –
But it’s been a long time since
and we must enquire the way
of strangers
Happy Women's History Month, babblers.
The Socialist and the Suffragist
Said the Socialist to the Suffragist:
“My cause is greater than yours!
You only work for a Special Class,
We work for the gain of the General Mass,
Which every good ensures!”
Said the Suffragist to the Socialist:
“You underrate my Cause!
While women remain a Subject Class,
You never can move the General Mass,
With your Economic Laws!”
Said the Socialist to the Suffragist:
“You misinterpret facts!
There is no room for doubt or schism
In Economic Determinism–
It governs all our acts!”
Said the Suffragist to the Socialist:
“You men will always find
That this old world will never move
More swiftly in its ancient groove
While women stay behind!”
“A lifted world lifts women up,”
The Socialist explained.
“You cannot lift the world at all
While half of it is kept so small,”
The Suffragist maintained.
The world awoke, and tartly spoke:
“Your work is all the same:
Work together or work apart,
Work, each of you, with all your heart–
Just get into the game!”
JACK
Jack,
I have seen you
Writing down the cries,
Like me,
Of the lonely waves
At Big Sur.
A Dharma bum riding the boxcar of life
While singin’ the Haiku Blues
Searching for the scripture
Of the Golden Eternity
Living in a subterranean San Francisco New York world
With Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs
Eating a naked lunch
Watching everyone watching you with a Black girlfriend
Wondering if you are too conscious about it.
Too manly a star football player to howl
A poet as novelist
Singing the French-Canadian Catholic spiritual blues with jazz overtones
Moving to the syncopated black beat
One of the angel-headed hipsters worshipping at the altar
Of the Goddesses of sex and drugs
Trapped between the non-conforming self-indulgent spontaneity of the trip
And the rigid rules of Catholicism and small town life
Where the drab gray-brown tenements of Franco-Canuck textile mill town Lowell Massachusetts
With its shrouds, deaths and funerals
And the horrors of Jesus Christ passion plays
Lurk in the background of your childhood memories.
Always looking for the next trip
On any road or any pill
Frantically searching for the meaninglessness of the loneliness of life
Finding oneness
In the Friday night literary salon
Of Kenneth Rexroth
And like Gary Synder
You never work in the office
Or mow the lawn
Because you have to climb that goddamn mountain.
On the mountain watchtower
Looking for fires
Of the soul
Learning how to meditate
So you don’t have to think anymore
Like a shot of heroin
You are a Bodhisattva
Achieving nirvana,
Oh, so briefly,
Like me.
Writing On the Road
In spontaneous prose flowing continuously
Onto a 120 foot long single roll of teletype paper
So you never have to stop to change sheets
In a frenzied three week bender of
Benzedrine and alcohol
Improvising a novel
Like a bebopping symbolistic impressionistic jazz musician
I can’t do that.
So shy, too shy,
You answer questions
In a monosyllabic low voice head down TV interview
Tapping your fingers
Until asked to read On the Road
Then the words flow like life from the page
Into your voice
Slowly at first
Accelerating west with Dean across Colorado
Into Arizona to see
Visions of America
With its drive-in wedding chapels
And dismal divorce bars
While gulping a bottle of muscatel
Racing to escape the loneliness of life
While seeing visions of God as Pooh Bear.
On the road again
With Neal Cassady
A true Irish working class hero
With a bottle of beer in one hand
Pedal to the medal
Shifting from first to fifth in one smooth, continuous motion
Rounding the next curve at 90 miles per hour
Never stopping at red lights
A girl waiting in every town
Speaking a million words a minute
From his machine gun mouth
Or is that an Irish working class stereotype.
You,
Like me,
Not quite able to keep up.
Until Neal is found
On a Mexican railway track
Chasing after a train
High on speed
Never able to stop
Until his heart gives out.
You,
Like me,
Found peace
With a Mexican girlfriend
For a week.
You,
On the road,
Again
Leaving behind the Mexico City Blues
A Desolation Angel
On the road
Between the town and the city
Finding satori in Paris,
Like me,
For a night.
On the road
Again,
Like me,
Tired of it all,
Heading home
To Mom’s,
Sitting in the living room,
Feet up,
Watching TV,
Waiting to die.
I understand, brother,
But I can not do the same.
I like that one, Jerry, thanks. I had a beatnik moment in university many years ago. Who is the author?
I like that one, Jerry, thanks. I had a beatnik moment in university many years ago. Who is the author?
I wrote it. Glad you liked it.
Very nice, Jerry!
Another one for Women's History Month:
Anne Sexton 1928 – 1974
Her Kind
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
Domestic Violence
BY ILIANA ROCHA
Morning dragonflies tricked by the sliding glass
door, scattered on the porch like cigarettes torn in half,
& a horse in watercolor, its joints light blue circles.
Golf carts zoom over the green breasts
of the hills. I slept on my hands,
flat pillows filled with a puzzle of tiny bones. Loneliness’s
gray blanket, last night’s mascara, loneliness—
a dragonfly hovers like spit in slow motion near the glass,
promises to fill the pane with itself like his hand,
my face reflecting back at him. Half
the world is still asleep, my breasts
alive & waking from my shirt. Wind in circles
through grass, horses tip in its direction. Saturated circles,
faces, move the muted TV screen, broadcast more loneliness:
buy this property, try this exercise. A woman with hard breasts
isn’t convincing. When I shift in myself, glass
breaks inside me, a sky losing over half
its stars, desperate dark hands
finding something else to fill it. Like hands,
birds clap their wings in desperation’s applause, circling
as if their species is dying out. My throat, half
gastrolith, half swollen tequila, it’s not loneliness
we flying things try to avoid, but in glass
a painful logic, one you learn like the breast’s.
A rainbow interrupts the white cloud breasts,
like mine, where once his hands
lived, then destroyed. My breath against silence’s smooth glass,
longing for the wisdom of a tree’s hollow, sex circle,
how it endures loneliness
by invitations to other survivors of this world from half
its violence, all its love.
A few poems about humility:
A Man Said to the Universe
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
----
The Pebble and the Acorn
by Hannah Flagg Gould
"I am a Pebble! and yield to none!"
Were swelling words of a tiny stone,
"Nor time nor season can alter me;
I am abiding, while ages flee.
The pelting hail and the drizzling rain
Have tried to soften me, long, in vain;
And the tender dew has sought to melt,
Or touch my heart; but it was not felt.
There's none that can tell about my birth,
For I'm as old as the big, round earth.
The children of men arise, and pass
Out of the world, like the blades of grass;
And many a foot on me has trod,
That's gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble! but who art thou,
Rattling along from the restless bough?"
The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay for a moment abashed and mute;
She never before had been so near
This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt for a time at a loss to know
How to answer a thing so coarse and low.
But to give reproof of a nobler sort
Than the angry look, or the keen retort,
At length she said, in a gentle tone,
"Since it has happened that I am thrown
From the lighter element, where I grew,
Down to another, so hard and new,
And beside a personage so august,
Abased, I will cover my head with dust,
And quickly retire from the sight of one
Whom time, nor season, nor storm, nor sun,
Nor the gentle dew, nor the grinding heel
Has ever subdued, or made to feel!"
And soon, in the earth, she sunk away
From the comfortless spot where the Pebble lay.
But it was not long ere the soil was broke
By the peering head of an infant oak!
And, as it arose and its branches spread,
The Pebble looked up, and wondering said,
"A modest Acorn! never to tell
What was enclosed in its simple shell;
That the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its little cup!
And meekly to sink in the darksome earth,
Which proves that nothing could hide her worth!
And oh! how many will tread on me,
To come and admire the beautiful tree,
Whose head is towering towards the sky,
Above such a worthless thing as I!
Useless and vain, a cumberer here,
I have been idling from year to year.
But never, from this, shall a vaunting word
From the humbled Pebble again be heard,
Till something without me or within,
Shall show the purpose for which I've been!"
The Pebble its vow could not forget,
And it lies there wrapt in silence yet.
Small collection of poems from Palestine here:
https://thebaffler.com/logical-revolts/poems-from-palestine
A few of my favourites:
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
I’ll write about a joy that invades Jenin from six directions,
about children running while holding balloons in Am’ari Camp,
about a fullness that quiets breastfeeding babies all night in Askar,
about a little sea we can stroll up and down in Tulkarem,
about eyes that stare in people’s faces in Balata,
about a woman dancing for people in line at the checkpoint in Qalandia,
about stitches in the sides of laughing men in Azzoun,
about you and me stuffing our pockets with seashells and madness
and building a city.
----
Ahlam Bsharat
How I Kill Soldiers
Colonial soldiers,
what have they been doing
to my poetry all these years
when I could have easily killed them
in my poems
as they’ve killed my family
outside poetry?
Poetry was my chance
to settle the score with killers,
but I let them age outdoors,
and I want them to know decay
in their lives, their faces to wrinkle,
their smiles to thin out,
and their weapons to hunch over.
So if you, dear readers, see a soldier
taking a stroll in my poem,
trust that I have left him to his fate
as I leave a criminal
to his many remaining years,
they will execute him.
And his ears will execute him
as he listens to me reciting my poem
to grieving families,
he won’t be able to slink out
of my book or the reading hall
as the seated audience stares at him.
You will not be consoled,
soldier, you will not,
not even as you exit
my poetry event
with slumped shoulders
and pockets full of dead bullets.
Even if your hand,
tremulous as it is
from so much murder,
fidgeted with the bullets,
you will not
produce more
than a dead sound.
Happy Women's History Month, babblers. A few poems to celebrate:
Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money
Mid-morning Monday she is staring
peaceful as the rain in that shallow back yard
she wears flannel bedroom slippers
she is sipping coffee
she is thinking—
—gazing at the weedy bumpy yard
at the faces beginning to take shape
in the wavy mud
in the linoleum
where floorboards assert themselves
Women whose lives are food
breaking eggs with care
scraping garbage from the plates
unpacking groceries hand over hand
Wednesday evening: he takes the cans out front
tough plastic with detachable lids
Thursday morning: the garbage truck whining at 7
Friday the shopping mall open till 9
bags of groceries unpacked
hand over certain hand
Men whose lives are money
time-and-a-half Saturdays
the lunchbag folded with care and brought back home
unfolded Monday morning
Women whose lives are food
because they are not punch-carded
because they are unclocked
sighing glad to be alone
staring into the yard, mid-morning
mid-week
by mid-afternoon everything is forgotten
There are long evenings
panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work
there are love scenes where people mouth passions
sprightly, handsome, silly, manic
in close-ups revealed ageless
the women whose lives are food
the men whose lives are money
fidget as these strangers embrace and weep and mis-
understand and forgive and die and weep and embrace
and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and
begin yawning around 10:30
never made it past midnight, even on Saturdays,
watching their braven selves perform
Where are the promised revelations?
Why have they been shown so many times?
Long-limbed children a thousand miles to the west
hitch-hiking in spring, burnt bronze in summer
thumbs nagging
eyes pleading
Give us a ride, huh? Give us a ride?
and when they return nothing is changed
the linoleum looks older
the Hawaiian Chicken is new
the girls wash their hair more often
the boys skip over the puddles
in the GM parking lot
no one eyes them with envy
their mothers stoop
the oven doors settle with a thump
the dishes are rinsed and stacked and
by mid-morning the house is quiet
it is raining out back
or not raining
the relief of emptiness rains
simple, terrible, routine
at peace
The Applicant
BY SYLVIA PLATH
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
The Gentlest Lady
They say He was a serious child,
And quiet in His ways;
They say the gentlest lady smiled
To hear the neighbors' praise.
The coffers of her heart would close
Upon their smaliest word.
Yet did they say, "How tall He grows!"
They thought she had not heard.
They say upon His birthday eve
She'd rock Him to His rest
As if she could not have Him leave
The shelter of her breast.
The poor must go in bitter thrift,
The poor must give in pain,
But ever did she get a gift
To greet His day again.
They say she'd kiss the Boy awake,
And hail Him gay and clear,
But oh, her heart was like to break
To count another year.
A few poems on saying goodbye:
All Things will Die
Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing
Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing
Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating
Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.
The old earth
Had a birth,
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die.
So let the warm winds range,
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro’ eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.
..there is a poetry about this prose.
Lætitia Sadier Talks to Jacobin About Revolutionary Love
quote:
LAETITIA SADIER
Fear is very human. It’s one of the most primary feelings, and it’s a natural response, a primordial reaction from the reptilian brain. But it’s also exploited by the powers that be to keep people at that level, so that they are less likely to efficiently organize to overthrow those very powers. When in fear or shock, you can’t think clearly, you’re more likely to follow the herd and collaborate with the executioner. Your frontal cortex is deactivated.
In America, it’s horrible how people are made to be completely paranoid: “Don’t take away my gun!” The world is perceived as a threat and menace to one’s own property. It’s like, “Whose property was this in the first place?” You stole it. That’s why you’re so fucking paranoid, you feel ashamed and illegitimate.
So, a lot of things are in place already, in people’s psyches, and I include myself in that. We are susceptible to being manipulated. In America, it’s particularly bad, where you have the right to have a gun and the perception of constant threats, which makes things even more volatile and dangerous.
“The world renounces its liberty because it is in fear” applies to the pandemic, but not only, it’s an old trick. Keep people in fear to better create scapegoats onto which we can project our own self-hatred. It’s important that we are aware of these mechanisms, to know that we project all the time, that we are likely to go and hate someone because they’re identified as Other, just to be left off the hook of our responsibility.
The album is also about that. It’s about the shadow we have in ourselves that we find too shameful or too unacceptable, which we can’t own. So we project it on our friends, on our family, on the neighbor, on the woman at the shop.....
