ENG2-2: Poetry Selections

R.A. 1.1: “I Am Offering this Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca 2

R.A. 1.2: “The Poetic Interpretation of the Twist” by Cornelius Eady 3

R.A. 1.3: “The Empty Dance Shoes” by Cornelius Eady 4

R.A. 1.4: “The Bridegroom” by Alexander Pushkin 5

R.A.: “The Guitar” by Federico García Lorca 8

R.A. 1.6: “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop 9

R.A. 1.7: “Danny Deever” by Rudyard Kipling 10

R.A. 1.8: “Mowing” by Robert Frost 11

R.A. 1.9: “A Tree Telling of Orpheus” by Denise Levertov 12

R.A. 1.10: “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye 16

R.A. 1.11: “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams 17

R.A. 1.12: “My City” by James Weldon Johnson 18

R.A. 1.13: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas 19

R.A. 1.14: Tanka 20

R.A. 1.15: “The Clustering Clouds” 21

R.A. 16: “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke 22

R.A. 1.17: “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare 23

R.A. 1.18: “The Wind — Tapped Like a Tired Man” by Emily Dickinson 24

R.A. 1.19: “Camouflaging the Chimera” by Yusef Komunyakaa 25

R.A. 1.20: “Metaphor” by Eve Merriam 26

R.A. 1.21: “Conscientious Objector” by Edna St. Vincent Millay 27

R.A. 1.22: “Pride” by Dahlia Ravikovitch 28

R.A. 1.23: “Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant” by Emily Dickinson 29

R.A. 1.24: “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes 30

R.A. 1.25: “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae 31

R.A. 1.26: “Jazz Fantasia” by Carl August Sandburg 32

R.A. 1.27: “Meeting at Night” by Robert Browning 33

R.A. 1.28: “The Kraken” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 34

R.A. 1.29: “Reapers” by Jean Toomer 35

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R.A. 1.1: “I Am Offering this Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca

I am offering this poem to you,

since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,

so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would

if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

I love you,

It’s all I have to give,

and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

I love you.

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R.A. 1.2: “The Poetic Interpretation of the Twist” by Cornelius Eady

I know what you’re expecting to hear.

You think to yourself: Here’s a guy who must understand
what the twist was all about.
Look at the knuckles of his hands,
Look at his plain, blue shirt hanging out of the back
of his trousers.
The twist must have been the equivalent of
the high sign
In a secret cult.
I know
I know
I know
But listen: I am still confused by the mini-skirt
As well as the deep meaning of vinyl on everything.
The twist was just a children’s game to us.
I know you expect there ought to be more to this,
The reason the whole world decided to uncouple,
But why should I lie to you? Let me pull up a chair
And in as few words as possible,
Re-create my sister,
Who was renowned for running like a giraffe.
Let me re-create my neighborhood,
A dead-end street next to the railroad tracks.
Let me re-create
My father, who would escape the house by bicycle
And do all the grocery shopping by himself.
Let’s not forget the pool hall and the barbershop,
Each with their strange flavors of men,
And while we’re on the subject,
I must not slight the ragweed,
The true rose of the street.
All this will still not give you the twist.
Forgive me for running on like this.
Your question has set an expectation
That is impossible to meet
Your question has put on my shoulders
A troublesome responsibility
Because the twist is gone.
It is the foundation of a bridge
That has made way for a housing project
And I am sorry to admit
You have come to the wrong person.
I recall the twist
The way we recall meeting a distant aunt as a baby
Or the afternoons spent in homeroom
Waiting for the last bell.
My head hurts.
I am tired of remembering.
Perhaps you can refresh my memory
And tell me
How we got on this topic?
As a favor to me,
Let’s not talk anymore about old dances.
I have an entire world on the tip of my tongue.

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R.A. 1.3: “The Empty Dance Shoes” by Cornelius Eady

My friends,
As it has been proven in the laboratory,
An empty pair of dance shoes
Will sit on the floor like a wart
Until it is given a reason to move.

Those of us who study inertia

(Those of us covered with wild hair and sleep)
Can state this without fear:
The energy in a pair of shoes at rest
Is about the same as that of a clown

Knocked flat by a sandbag.

This you can tell your friends with certainty:
A clown, flat on his back,
Is a lot like an empty pair of
dancing shoes.

An empty pair of dancing shoes

Is also a lot like a leaf
Pressed in a book.
And now you know a simple truth:
A leaf pressed in, say, The Colossus
by Sylvia Plath,
Is no different from an empty pair of dance shoes

Even if those shoes are in the middle of the Stardust Ballroom

With all the lights on, and hot music shakes the windows
up and down the block.
This is the secret of inertia:
The shoes run on their own sense of the world.
They are in sympathy with the rock the kid skips
over the lake
After it settles to the mud.
Not with the ripples,
But with the rock.

A practical and personal application of inertia

Can be found in the question:
Whose Turn Is It
To Take Out The Garbage?
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the answer to this question,
As well as book-length poems
Set in the Midwest.

To sum up:
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the sand the 98-pound weakling
brushes from his cheeks
As the bully tows away his girlfriend.
Later,

When he spies the coupon at the back of the comic book,

He is about to act upon a different set of scientific principles.
He is ready to dance.

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R.A. 1.4: “The Bridegroom” by Alexander Pushkin

For three days Natasha The next morning, the old

The merchant’s daughter, Matchmaking woman
Was missing. The third night, Unexpectedly calls and
She ran in, distraught . Sings the girl’s praises;
Her father and mother Says to the father;
Plied her with questions. ‘You Have the goods and I
She did not hear them, A buyer for them:
She could hardly breathe. A handsome young man.

Stricken with foreboding ‘He bows to no one,

They pleaded, got angry, He lives like a lord
But still she was silent; With no debts nor worries;
At last they gave up. He’s rich and he’s generous,
Natasha’s cheeks regained Says he will give his bride,
Their rosy colour, On their wedding-day,
A fox-fur coat, a pearl,
And cheerfully again Gold rings, brocaded dresses.
She sat with her sisters.
Once at the shingle-gate ‘Yesterday, out driving,
She sat with her friends He saw your Natasha;
-And a swift troika Shall we shake hands
Flashed by before them; And get her to church?’
A handsome young man The woman starts to eat
Stood driving the horses; A pie, and talks in riddles ,
Snow and mud went flying, While the poor girl
Splashing the girls. Does not know where to look.

He gazed as he flew past, ‘Agreed,’ says her father;

And Natasha gazed. ‘Go in happiness
He flew on. Natasha froze. To the altar, Natasha;
Headlong she ran home. ‘It was he! It was he!’ It’s dull for you here;
She cried. ‘I know it!’ A swallow should not spend
I recognized him! All its time singing,
Papa, Mama, save me from him!’ It’s time for you to build
A nest for your children.’
Full of grief and fear,
They shake their heads, sighing. Natasha leaned against
Her father says: ‘My child, The wall and tried
Tell me everything. To speak – but found herself
If someone has harmed you, Sobbing ; she was shuddering
Tell us ... even a hint.’ And laughing. The matchmaker
She weeps again and Poured out a cup of water,
Her lips remain sealed. Gave her some to drink,
Splashed some in her face.

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Her parents are distressed. ‘And suddenly, as if
Then Natasha recovered, I was awake, I saw
And calmly she said: A hut. I approach the hut
‘Your will be done. Call And knock at the door
My bridegroom to the feast, -Silence. A prayer on my lips
Bake loaves for the whole world, I open the door and enter.
Brew sweet mead and call A candle burns. All
The law to the feast.’ Is silver and gold.’

‘Of course, Natasha, angel! Bridegroom: ‘What is bad about that?

You know we’d give our lives It promises wealth.’
To make you happy!’
They bake and they brew; Bride: ‘Wait, sir, I’ve not finished.
The worthy guests come, Silently I gazed
The bride is led to the feast, On the silver and gold,
Her maids sing and weep; The cloths, the rugs, the silks
Then horses and a sledge From Novgorod, and I
Was lost in wonder.
With the groom – and all sit.
The glasses ring and clatter, ‘Then I heard a shout
The toasting-cup is passed And a clatter of hoofs ...
From hand to hand in tumult Someone has driven up
The guests are drunk. To the porch. Quickly
I slammed the door and hid
Bridegroom: ‘Friends, why is my fair bride Behind the stove. Now
Sad, why is she not I hear many voices ...
Feasting and serving?’ Twelve young men come in,

The bride answers the groom: ‘And with them is a girl,

‘I will tell you why Pure and beautiful.
As best I can. My soul They’ve taken no notice
Knows no rest, day and night Of the ikons, they sit
I weep; an evil dream To the table without
Oppresses me.’ Her father Praying or taking off
Says: ‘My dear child, tell us Their hats. At the head,
What your dream is.’ The eldest brother,
At his right, the youngest;
‘I dreamed,’ she says, ‘that At his left, the girl.
I Went into a forest, Shouts, laughs, drunken clamour ...’
It was late and dark;
The moon was faintly Bridegroom: ‘That betokens merriment.’
Shining behind a cloud;
I strayed from the path; Bride: ‘Wait, sir, I’ve not finished.
Nothing stirred except The drunken din goes on
The tops of the pine-trees. And grows louder still.
Only the girl is sad.

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‘She sits silent; neither
Eating nor drinking;
But sheds tears in plenty;
The eldest brother
Takes his knife and, whistling,
Sharpens it; seizing her by
The hair he kills her
And cuts off her right hand.’

‘Why,’ says the groom, ‘this

Is nonsense! Believe me,
My love, your dream is not evil.
She looks him in the eyes.
‘And from whose hand
Does this ring come?’
The bride said. The whole throng
Rose in the silence.

With a clatter the ring

Falls, and rolls along
The floor. The groom blanches,
Trembles. Confusion ...
‘Seize him!’ the law commands.
He’s bound , judged, put to death.
Natasha is famous!
Our song is at an end.

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R.A.: “The Guitar” by Federico García Lorca

Now begins the cry

Of the guitar,
Breaking the vaults
Of dawn.
Now begins the cry
Of the guitar.
Useless
To still it.
Impossible to still it.
It weeps monotonously
As weeps the water,
As weeps the wind
Over snow
Impossible
To still it.
It weeps
For distant things,
Warm southern sands
Desiring white camellias
It mourns the arrow without a target
The evening without morning.
And the first bird dead
Upon a branch.
O guitar!
A wounded heart,
Wounded by five swords.

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R.A. 1.6: “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly-
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
- It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
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R.A. 1.7: “Danny Deever” by Rudyard Kipling

“What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade.

“To turn you out, to turn you out”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
“What makes you look so white, so white?” said Files-on-Parade.
“I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they’re hangin ‘ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
The Regiment’s in ‘ollow square, they’re hangin’ him to-day;
They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away,
An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.
 
“What makes the rear-rank breathe so ‘ard?” said Files-on-Parade.
“It’s bitter cold, it’s bitter cold”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
“What makes that front-rank man fall down?” said Files-on-Parade.
“A touch o’ sun, a touch o’ sun”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, they are marchin’ of ‘im round,
They ‘ave ‘alted Danny Deever by ‘is coffin on the ground;
An’ ‘e’ll swing in ‘arf a minute for a sneakin’ shootin’ hound ,
O they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’!

“‘Is cot was right-’and cot to mine”, said Files-on-Parade.

“‘E’s sleepin’ out an’ far to-night”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
“I’ve drunk ‘is beer a score o’ times”, said Files-on-Parade.
“‘E’s drinkin’ bitter beer alone”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, you must mark ‘im to ‘is place,
For ‘e shot a comrade sleepin’, you must look ‘im in the face;
Nine ‘undred of ‘is county an’ the Regiment’s disgrace,
While they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

“What’s that so black agin’ the sun?” said Files-on-Parade.

“It’s Danny fightin’ ‘ard for life”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
“What’s that that whimpers over’ead?” said Files-on-Parade.
“It’s Danny’s soul that’s passin’ now”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they’re done with Danny Deever, you can ‘ear the quickstep play,
The Regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away;
Ho! the young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day,
After hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

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R.A. 1.8: “Mowing” by Robert Frost

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble -pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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R.A. 1.9: “A Tree Telling of Orpheus” by Denise Levertov

White dawn. Stillness. When the rippling began

I took it for a sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
of salt, of treeless horizons. but the white fog
didn't stir; the leaved of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.

Yet the rippling drew nearer — and then

my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
Yet I was not afraid, only
deeply alert.

I was the first to see him, for I grew

out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or gold grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
more like a flower's.
He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
as if rain
rose from below and around me
instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
what the lark knows; all my sap
was mounting towards the sun that by now
had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.

He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:

the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! there was no twig of me not
trembling with joy and fear.

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Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told of journeys,
of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots…
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
and I, a tree, understood words — ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling's that
grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chord flamed
up to the crown of me.

I was seed again.

I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

And at the heart of my wood

(so close I was to becoming man or god)
there was a kind of silence, a kind of sickness,
something akin to what men call boredom,
something
(the poem descended a scale, a stream over stones)
that gives to a candle a coldness
in the midst of its burning, he said.

It was then,
when in the blaze of his power that
reached me and changed me
I thought I should fall my length,
that the singer began
to leave me. Slowly
moved from my noon shadow
to open light,
words leaping and dancing over his shoulders
back to me
rivery sweep of lyre-tones becoming
slowly again
ripple.

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And I in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand year's layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.

You would have thought we would lose the sound of the lyre,
of the singing
so dreadful the storm-sounds were, where there was no storm,
no wind but the rush of our
branches moving, our trunks breasting the air.
But the music!
The music reached us.
Clumsily,
stumbling over our own roots,
rustling our leaves
in answer,
we moved, we followed.

All day we followed, up hill and down.

We learned to dance,
for he would stop, where the ground was flat,
and words he said
taught us to leap and to wind in and out
around one another in figures the lyre's measure designed.

The singer
laughed till he wept to see us, he was so glad.
At sunset
we came to this place I stand in, this knoll
with its ancient grove that was bare grass then.
In the last light of that day his song became
farewell.
He stilled our longing.
He sang our sun-dried roots back into earth,
watered them: all-night rain of music so quiet
we could almost
not hear it in the
moonless dark.

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By dawn he was gone.
We have stood here since,
in our new life.
We have waited.
He does not return.
It is said he made his earth-journey, and lost
what he sought.
It is said they felled him
and cut up his limbs for firewood.
And it is said
his head still sang and was swept out to sea singing.
Perhaps he will not return.
But what we have lived
comes back to us.
We see more.
We feel, as our rings increase,
something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest
leaf-tips
further.
The wind, the birds,
do not sound poorer but clearer,
recalling our agony, and the way we danced.
The music!

15
R.A. 1.10: “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,

I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”

I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,

the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

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R.A. 1.11: “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast -- a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water

the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish

purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines --

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish

dazed spring approaches --

They enter the new world naked,

cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind --

Now the grass, tomorrow

the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined --

It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of

entrance -- Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

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R.A. 1.12: “My City” by James Weldon Johnson

When I come down to sleep death's endless night,

The threshold of the unknown dark to cross,
What to me then will be the keenest loss,
When this bright world blurs on my fading sight?
Will it be that no more I shall see the trees
Or smell the flowers or hear the singing birds
Or watch the flashing streams or patient herds?
No, I am sure it will be none of these.

But, ah! Manhattan's sights and sounds, her smells,

Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes
From being of her a part, her subtle spells,
Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums—
O God! the stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city!

18
R.A. 1.13: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

19
R.A. 1.14: Tanka

Tanka #1 by Ki no Tsurayuki
When I went to visit
The girl I love so much,
That winter night I went
The river blew so cold
That the plovers were crying.

Tanka #2 by Ono Komachi

Was it that I went to sleep
Thinking of him,
That he came in my dreams?
Had I known it a dream
I should not have wakened.

Tanka #3 by Priest Jakuren

One cannot ask loneliness
How or where it starts.
On the cypress-mountain,
Autumn evening.

20
R.A. 1.15: “The Clustering Clouds”

The clustering clouds —

Can it be they wipe away
The lunar shadows?
Every time they clear a bit
The moonlight shines the brighter.

21
R.A. 16: “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

22
R.A. 1.17: “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

23
R.A. 1.18: “The Wind — Tapped Like a Tired Man” by Emily Dickinson

The wind tapped like a tired man,

And like a host, ‘Come in,’
I boldly answered; entered then
My residence within

A rapid, footless guest,

To offer whom a chair
Were as impossible as hand
A sofa to the air.

No bone had he to bind him,

His speech was like the push
Of numerous humming-birds at once
From a superior bush.

His countenance a billow,

His fingers, if he pass,
Let go a music, as of tunes
Blown tremulous in glass.
He visited, still flitting8;
Then, like a timid man,
Again he tapped — ‘t was flurriedly —
And I became alone.

24
R.A. 1.19: “Camouflaging the Chimera” by Yusef Komunyakaa

We tied branches to our helmets.

We painted our faces & rifles
with mud from a riverbank,

blades of grass hung from the pockets

of our tiger suits. We wove
ourselves into the terrain,
content to be a hummingbird’s target.

We hugged bamboo & leaned

against a breeze off the river,
slow-dragging with ghosts

from Saigon to Bangkok,

with women left in doorways
reaching in from America.
We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.

In our way station of shadows

rock apes tried to blow our cover,
throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons

crawled our spines, changing from day

to night: green to gold,
gold to black. But we waited
till the moon touched metal,

till something almost broke

inside us. VC struggled
with the hillside, like black silk

wrestling iron through grass.

We weren’t there. The river ran
through our bones. Small animals took refuge
against our bodies; we held our breath,

ready to spring the L-shaped

ambush, as a world revolved
under each man’s eyelid.

25
R.A. 1.20: “Metaphor” by Eve Merriam

Morning is
a new sheet of paper
for you to write on.

Whatever you want to say,

all day,
until night
fold it up
and files it away.

The bright words and the dark words

are gone
until dawn
and a new day
to write on.

26
R.A. 1.21: “Conscientious Objector” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but

that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.
 
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.

27
R.A. 1.22: “Pride” by Dahlia Ravikovitch

Even rocks crack, I'm telling you,

and not on account of age.
For years they lie on their backs
in the heat and the cold,
so many years,
it almost creates the illusion of calm.
They don't move, so the cracks stay hidden.
A kind of pride.
Years pass over them as they wait.
Whoever is going to shatter them
hasn't come yet.
And so the moss flourishes, the seaweed
whips around,
the sea bursts forth and rolls back --
and still they seem motionless.
Till a little seal comes to rub up against the rocks,
comes and goes.
And suddenly the rock has an open wound.
I told you, when rocks crack, it comes as a surprise.
All the more so, people.

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R.A. 1.23: “Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant” by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

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R.A. 1.24: “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

30
R.A. 1.25: “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

31
R.A. 1.26: “Jazz Fantasia” by Carl August Sandburg

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,

sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy

tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-
husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops,

moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a
racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!
you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns,
tin cans — make two people fight on the top of a stairway
and scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling down
the stairs.

Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushes

up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the green
lanterns calling to the high soft stars . . . a red moon rides
on the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen.

32
R.A. 1.27: “Meeting at Night” by Robert Browning

I
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow ,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
II
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane , the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

33
R.A. 1.28: “The Kraken” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

34
R.A. 1.29: “Reapers” by Jean Toomer

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones

Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds.
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

35