GLOBAL

LITERATURE

GROUP 5
Balneg, Eurika Maian Balneg
Billedo, Jefferson
Dacuno, Dana Marie Bianca
Domingo, Bowen Christopher
Espiritu, Trisha Mae
Panganiban, Angel Grace
Palaganas, Lorraine Jane

BSE SCIENCE III-3

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 5: EAST ASIA
a)From the Analects by Confucius (II-2, II-2,
II-4, II-7, VII- 15, XV-23) – China
b)From Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (29, 31
and 33) – China
c)The Mole by Yasunari Kabawata – Japan
Chapter 6: THE AMERICAS
a)Sonnet 145 Sor Juana Ines Dela Cruz-
Mexico
b)Horses by Pablo Neruda- Chile
c)The Handsomest Drowned Man in the
World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez –
Columbia
d)Dream Variations by Langston Hughes –
USA
e)Alone by Maya Angelou- USA
Chapter 7: AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC
a)The Things We Dare Not Tell by Henry
Lawson
b)Municipal Gum by Oogeroo Noonuccal by
Kath Walker
c)Clouds on the Sea by Ruth Dallas- New
Zealand
 THE ANALECTS
by Confucius

2.1 The Master said, “One who rules through the power of Virtue is analogous to the Pole Star: it
simply remains in its place and receives the homage of the myriad lesser stars.”

2.2 The Master said, “The Odes number several hundred, and yet can be judged with a single
phrase: ‘Oh, they will not lead you astray'”

2.4 The Master said, “At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning; at thirty, I took my place in society; at
forty, I became free of doubts; at fifty, I understood Heaven’s Mandate; at sixty, my ear was attuned;
and at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety.”

2.7 Ziyou asked about filial devotion. The Master said, nowadays it’s taken to mean just seeing that
one’s parents get enough to eat. But we do that much for dogs or horses as well. If there is no
reverence, how is it any different?

7.15 The Master said, eating simple food, drinking water, a bended arm for a pillow—there’s
happiness in these things too. Wealth and eminence gained by unrightful means are to me mere
drifting clouds.

15.23 The Master said, “The gentleman does not promote someone solely based upon their words,
nor does he dismiss words simply on account of the person who uttered them.”
 FROM TAO TE CHING
by Lao Tzu
At war, he honors the right side.
29
Conquering the world and changing it,
Weapons are ominous tools.
I do not think it can succeed.
They are not the noble ruler's tools.
The world is a sacred vessel that cannot be
He only uses them when he can't avoid it.
changed.
Peace and quiet are preferred.
He who changes it will destroy it.
He who seizes it will lose it.
Victory should not be praised.
Those who praise victory relish manslaughter.
So, among all things,
Those who relish manslaughter
Some lead and some follow,
Cannot reach their goals in the world.
Some sigh and some pant,
Some are strong and some are weak,
At times of joy, the left side is honored.
Some overcome and some succumb.
At times of grief, the right side is honored.
At battle, the second in command stands to
Therefore, the sage avoids extremity, excess,
the left,
and extravagance.
And the commander in chief to the right.
This means they stand as in funerals.
31
Weapons are ominous tools.
When many people are killed
They are abhorred by all creatures.
They should be mourned and lamented.
Anyone who follows the Way shuns them.
Those who are victorious in war
Should follow the rites of funerals
In peaceful times, the noble ruler honors the
left side.
Those who know when they have enough are
33 rich.
Those who understand others are clever, Those who are unswerving have resolve.
Those who understand themselves are wise. Those who stay where they are will endure.
Those who defeat others are strong, Those who die without being forgotten get
Those who defeat themselves are mighty. longevity.
 Sonnet 145: A Su Retrato
By: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

This thing you see, a trick of colors

showing off the workmanship of art
with false syllogisms of color
is a clever trick of the senses;

this thing, in which flattery presumed

to hide the horrors of the years
and, overcoming the rigors of time,
to triumph over age and oblivion,

is a vain artifice of careful work,

a delicate flower thrown to the wind,
a useless safeguard against destiny;

it is a foolish, mistaken effort,

an expired desire, and, correctly viewed,
it is cadaver, dust and shadow, nothing.
 HORSES
by Pablo Neruda
From the window I saw the horses.
I was in Berlin, in winter. The light
had no light, the sky had no heaven.
The air was white like wet bread.
And from my window a vacant arena,
bitten by the teeth of winter.
Suddenly driven out by a man,
ten horses surged through the mist.
Like waves of fire, they flared forward
and to my eyes filled the whole world,
empty till then. Perfect, ablaze,
they were like ten gods with pure white hoofs,
with manes like a dream of salt.
Their rumps were worlds and oranges.
Their color was honey, amber, fire.
Their necks were towers
cut from the stone of pride,
and behind their transparent eyes
energy raged, like a prisoner.
There, in silence, at mid-day,
in that dirty, disordered winter,
those intense horses were the blood
the rhythm, the inciting treasure of life.
I looked. I looked and was reborn:
for there, unknowing, was the fountain,
the dance of gold, heaven
and the fire that lives in beauty.
I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.
I will not forget the light of the horses.
 THE MOLE (HOKURO NO NIKKI, 1940)
by Kabawata Yasunari

Last night I dreamed about that mole.

I need only write the world for you to know what I mean. That mole- how many times have I been
scolded by you because of it?

It is on my right shoulder, or perhaps I should say high on my back.

"It's already bigger than a bean. Go on playing with it and it will be sending out shoots one of these
days." 

You used to tease me about it. But as you said, it was large for a mole, large and wonderfully round
and swollen.

As a child, I used to lie in bed and play with that mole. How ashamed I was when you first noticed it.

I even wept, and I remember your surprise. 

"Stop it, Sayoko. The more you touch it the bigger it will be." My mother scolded me too. I was still a
child, probably not yet thirteen, and afterwards I kept the habit to myself. It persisted after I had all
but forgotten about it.  

When you first noticed it, I was still more child than life. I wonder if you, a man, can imagine how
ashamed I was. But it was more than shame. This is dreadful, I thought to myself. Marriage seemed
at that moment a fearful thing indeed.

I felt as though all my secrets had been discovered- as though you had bared secret after secret of
which I was not even conscious myself- as though I had refuge left.

You went off happily to sleep and sometimes I felt relieved, and a little lonely and sometimes I
pulled myself up with a start as my hand traveled to the mole again.

"I can't even touch my mole anymore," I thought of writing to my mother, but even as I thought of it, I
felt my face go fiery red.

"But what nonsense to worry about a mole," you once said. I was happy and I nodded, but looking
back now, I wonder if it would not have been better if you had been able to love that wretched habit
of mine a little more.

I did not worry so very much about the mole. Surely, people do not go about looking down women's
necks for moles. Sometimes the expression "unspoiled as a locked room" is used to describe a
deformed girl. But a mole, no matter how large it is, can hardly be called a deformity. 

Why do you suppose I fell into the habit of playing with the mole?

And why did the habit annoy you so?

"Stop it," you would say. "Stop it." I do not know how many hundred times you scolded me. 

"Do you have to use your left hand?" you asked once in a fit of irritation.

"My left hand?" I was startled by the question.

It was true. I had not noticed before, but I always used my left hand.

"It's on your right shoulder. Your right hand should be better."

"Oh?" I raised my right hand. "But it's strange."

"It's not a bit strange."

"But it's more natural with my left hand."

I meant to think of long ago, when I was young but when I touched the mole, all I thought of was
you. 

I have been damned as a bad wife, and perhaps I shall be divorced; but it would not have occurred
to me that here in bed at home again I should have only these thoughts of you.

I turned over my damp pillow- and I even dreamed of the mole.

I could not tell after I awoke where the room might have been but you were there, and some other
women seemed to be with us. I had been drinking. Indeed, I was drunk. I kept pleading with you
about something. 

My bad habit came out again. I reached around my left hand, my arms across my breast as always.
But the mole- did it not come right off between my fingers? It came off painlessly, quite as though
that were the most natural things in the world. Between my fingers, it felt exactly like the skin of
roast bean. 

Like a spoiled child. I asked you to put my mole in the pit of that mole beside your nose. 

I pushed my mole at you. I cried and glamore. I clutched at your sleeve and hung on your chest. 

When I awoke, the pillow was still wet. I was still weeping. I felt tired through and through. And at
the same time, I felt light, as though I had laid down a burden.

I lay smiling for a time, wondering if the mole had really disappeared. I had trouble bringing myself
to touch it.

That is all there is to the story of my mole.

I can still feel it like a black bean between my fingers. 

I have never thought much about that little mole beside your nose and I have never spoken of it,
and yet I suppose I have had it always on my mind.

And how happy I would be if I thought you in your turn had dreamed of my mole.

I have forgotten one thing.

"That's what I hate," you said, and so well did I understand that I even thought the remark a sign of
your affection for me. I thought that all the meanest things in me came out when I fingered the
mole. 

"I wonder, however, if a fact of which I have already spoken does not redeem me; it was perhaps
because of the way my mother and sisters petted me that I first tell into the habit of fingering the
mole. 

"I supposed you used to scold me when I played with the mole," I said to my mother, "a long time
ago." 

"I did- it was not so long ago, though."

"Why did you scold me?"

"Why? It's a bad habit, that's all."

"But how did you feel when you saw me playing with the mole?"

"Well..." My mother cocked her head to one side. "It wasn't becoming."

"That's true. But how did it look? Were you sorry for me? Or did you think I was nasty and hateful?" 
"I didn't really think about it much. It just seemed as though you could say well leave it alone, with
that sleepy expression on your face."

If it mattered so little to you, why did you have to scold me so, I wanted to ask; and I suppose you
for your part wanted to ask why. If the habit was to be cured so easily, I had not been able to cure it
earlier. But you would not even talk to me. 

A habit that makes no difference that is neither medicine nor poison – go ahead and indulge
yourself all day long if it pleases you. That is what the expression on your face seemed to say. I felt
dejected. Just to annoy you, I thought of touching the mole again, there in front of you, but
strangely, my hand refused to move. 

I felt lonely. And I felt angry.

I thought too of touching it when you were not around. But somehow, that seemed shameful,
repulsive, and again my hand refused to move.

I looked at the floor, and I bit my lip.

“What’s happened to your mole?” I was waiting for you to say, but after that, the word “mole”
disappeared from our conversation. 

And perhaps many other things disappeared with it. 

Why could I do nothing in the days I was being scolded by you? What a worthless woman I am.

Back at home again, I took a bath with my mother.

“You’re not as good looking as you once were, Sayoko.” She said. You can’t fight age, I supposed.

I looked at her startled. She was as she had always been plump and fresh-skinned.

“And that mole used to be rather attractive.”

I have really suffered because of that mole – but I could not say “it’s no trouble for a doctor to
remove a mole.”

“Oh? For a doctor…but there would be a scar.” How calm and easy going my mother is! “We used
to laugh about it. We said that Sayoko was probably still playing with that mole even now that she
was married.”

“I was playing with it.”

“We thought you would be.”

“It was a bad habit. When did I start?”

“When do children begin to have moles, I wonder. You don’t seem to see them on babies.” 

“My children have none.” 

“Oh? But they begin to come out as they grow up and they never disappear. It’s not often you see
this size, though. You must have had it when you were small.” My mother looked at my shoulder
and laughed.

I remember how, when I was very young, my mother and my sisters sometimes poked at the mole a
charming little spot then. And was that not why I had fallen into the habit of playing with it myself?

I lay in bed fingering the mole and trying to remember how it was a child and a young woman.

It was a very long time since I had last played with it. How many years, I wonder.
Back in the house where I was born, away from you I could play with it as liked. No one would stop
me.

But it was good.

As my fingers touched the mole, cold tears came to my eyes. 

That pose, with my left arm drawn up around my neck- it must look somehow dreary. Forlorn. I
would hesitate to use a grand word like “solitary.” Shabby, rather and mean, the pose of a woman
concerned only with protecting her own small self. And the expression on my face must be just as
you describe it. “Strange, absent-minded.”

Did it seem as a sin that I had not really given myself to you, as though a space lay between us?
And did my true feelings come out on my face when I touched the mole and lost myself in reverie,
as I had done since I was a child.

But it must have been because you were already dissatisfied with me that you made so much of
that small habit. If you had been pleased with me, you would have smiled and thought no more
about it. 

That was the frightening thought. I trembled when it came to me all of a sudden that there might be
men who would find the habit charming.

It was your love for me that made you notice. I do not doubt that even now. But it is just this sort of
small annoyance as it grows and becomes distorted that it drives its roots down into marriage. To a
real husband and wife personal eccentricities have stopped mattering and I suppose on the other
hand there are husbands and wives who find themselves at odds on everything. I do not say that
those who constantly disagree hate each other. I do think, though, and cannot get over thinking, that
it would have been better if you could have brought yourself to overlook my habit of playing with the
mole.

You actually came to beat me and kick me. I wept and asked why you could not be a little less
violent, why I had to suffer because I touched the mole. That was only surface. “How can we cure
it? “You said, your voice trembling and I quite understood how you felt and did not resent what you
did. If I had told anyone of this, no doubt you would have seemed a violent husband. But since we
had reached a point where the most trivial matter added to the tension between us, you hitting me
actually brought a sudden feeling of release. 

“I will never get over it, never. Tie up my hands.” I brought my hands together and thrust them at
your chest, as though i were giving myself, all of myself, to you. 

You looked confused, your anger seemed to have left you limp and drained of emotion. You took
the cord from my sash and tied my hands with it. 

I was happy when I saw the look in your eyes, watching me try to smooth my hair with my bad
hands. This time the long habit might be cured, I thought. 

Even then, however, it was dangerous for anyone to brush against the mole.

And was it because afterwards the habit came back that the last of your affection for me finally
died? Did you mean to tell me that you had given up and that I could very well do as I please?
When I played with the mole, you pretend you did not see me, and you said nothing.

Then a strange thing happened. Presently the habit scolding and beating had done nothing to cur
was it not gone? None of the extreme remedies worked. It simply left of its own accord. 

“What do you know – I’m not playing with the mole anymore.” I said it as though I had only that
moment notice. You granted and looked as if you did not care.

“The right hand is nearer.”

“It’s backwards with my right hand.”

“Backwards?”

“Yes, it’s a choice between bringing my arm in front of my neck or reaching around in back like this.”
I was no longer agreeing meekly with everything you said. Even as I answered you, though, it came
to me that when I brought my left arm around in front of me it was as though I were embracing
myself. I have been cruel to him, I thought. 

I asked quietly, “But what is wrong with using my left hand?”

“Left hand or right hand, it’s a bad habit.”

“I know.”

“Haven’t I told you time and time again to go to a doctor and have the thing removed?”

“But I couldn’t. I’d be ashamed to.”

‘It would be a very simple matter”

“Who would go to a doctor to have a mole removed?”

“A great many people seemed to.”

“For moles in the middle of the face, maybe. I doubt if anyone goes to have a mole removed from
the neck. The doctor would laugh. He would know I was there because my husband had
complained.”

“You could tell him it was because you had a habit of playing with it.”

“Really…. Something as insignificant as a mole, in a place where you can’t even see it. I should
think you could stand at least that much.”

“I wouldn’t mind the mole if you wouldn’t play with it.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“You are stubborn, though. No matter what I say, you make no attempt to change yourself.”

“I do try. I even tried wearing a high necked nightgown so that I wouldn’t touch it.”

“Not for long.”

‘But why do you do?’

But as it so wrong to me to touch it?” I suppose I must have seemed to be fighting back.

“It’s not wrong, especially. I only ask you to stop because I didn’t like it”

“But why do you dislike it so?”

“There’s no need to go into reasons. Yu don’t need to play with that mole, and it’s a bad habit, and I
wish you would stop.”

“I’ve never said I won’t stop.”

“And when you touch it you always get that strange, absent minded expression on your face. That’s
what I really hate.”

You’re probably right – something made the remark go straight to my heart, and I wanted to nod my
agreement.

“Next time you see me doing it, slap my hand. Slap my face even.” 

“But doesn’t it bother you that even though you’ve been trying for two or three years you haven’t
been able to cure a little trivial little habit like that y yourself?”
I did not answer. I was thinking of your words, “That’s what I really hate.”

“You found me annoying?”

“It did bother me a little.”

And you and the others used to poke at the mole to tease me?”

“I suppose we did.”

If that is true, then wasn’t I fingering the mole in that absent way to remember the love my mother
and sisters had for me when I was young?

Wasn’t I doing it to think of the people I loved?

This is what I must say to you.

Weren’t you mistaken from beginning to end about my mole?

Could I have been thinking of anyone else when I was with you?s

My habit of playing with the mole is a small thing and I do not mean to make excuses for it, but
might not all of the other things that turned me into a bad wife have begun in the same way? Might
they not have been in the beginning expressions of my love for you, turned my unwifeliness only by
your refusal to see what they were?

Even as I write, I wonder if I do not sound like a bad wife trying to seem wronged. Still, there are
these things that I must say to you.
 THE HANDSOMEST DROWNED MAN IN THE WORLD
by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

THE FIRST CHILDREN who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the sea let
themselves think it was an enemy ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts and they thought it
was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the
jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a
drowned man. They had been playing with him all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging
him up again, when someone chanced to see them and spread the alarm in the village. The men
who carried him to the nearest house noticed that he weighed more than any dead man they had
ever known, almost as much as a horse, and they said to each other that maybe he'd been floating
too long and the water had got into his bones. When they laid him on the floor, they said he'd been
taller than all other men because there was barely enough room for him in the house, but they
thought that maybe the ability to keep on growing after death was part of the nature of certain
drowned men. He had the smell of the sea about him and only his shape gave one to suppose that
it was the corpse of a human being, because the skin was covered with a crust of mud and scales.
They did not even have to clean off his face to know that the dead man was a stranger. The village
was made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers and
which were spread about on the end of a desert like cape. There was so little land that mothers
always went about with the fear that the wind would carry off their children and the few dead that
the years had caused among them had to be thrown off the cliffs. But the sea was calm and
bountiful and all the men fitted into seven boats. So, when they found the drowned man, they simply
had to look at one another to see that they were all there.

That night they did not go out to work at sea. While the men went to find out if anyone was missing
in neighboring villages, the women stayed behind to care for the drowned man. They took the mud
off with grass swabs, they removed the underwater stones entangled in his hair, and they scraped
the crust off with tools used for scaling fish. As they were doing that, they noticed that the vegetation
on him came from faraway oceans and deep water and that his clothes were in tatters, as if he had
sailed through labyrinths of coral. They noticed too that he bore his death with pride, for he did not
have the lonely look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of
men who drowned in rivers. But only when they finished cleaning him off did, they become aware of
the kind of man he was and it left them breathless. Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile,
and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no
room for him in their imagination.

They could not find a bed in the village large enough to lay him on nor was there a table solid
enough to use for his wake. The tallest men’s holiday pants would not fit him, nor the fattest ones'
Sunday shirts, nor the shoes of the one with the biggest feet. Fascinated by his huge size and his
beauty, the women then decided to make him some pants from a large piece of sail and a shirt
from some bridal linen so that he could continue through his death with dignity. As they sewed,
sitting in a circle and gazing at the corpse between stitches, it seemed to them that the wind had
never been so steady nor the sea so restless as on that night and they supposed that the change
had something to do with the dead man. They thought that if that magnificent man had lived in the
village, his house would have had the widest doors, the highest ceiling, and the strongest floor, his
bedstead would have been made from a midship frame held together by iron bolts, and his wife
would have been the happiest woman.

They thought that he would have had so much authority that he could have drawn fish out of the
sea simply by calling their names and that he would have put so much work into his land that
springs would have burst forth from among the rocks so that he would have been able to plant
flowers on the cliffs. They secretly compared him to their own men, thinking that for all their lives
theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them
deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest and most useless creatures on earth. They were
wandering through that maze of fantasy when the oldest They woman, who as the oldest had
looked upon the drowned man with more compassion than passion, sighed: 'He has the face of
someone called Esteban.' It was true. Most of them had only to take another look at him to see that
he could not have any other name. The more stubborn among them, who were the youngest, still
lived for a few hours with the illusion that when they put his clothes on and he lay among the flowers
in patent leather shoes his name might be Lautaro. But it was a vain illusion. There had not been
enough canvas, the poorly cut and worse sewn pants were too tight, and the hidden strength of his
heart popped the buttons on his shirt. After midnight the whistling of the wind died down and the sea
fell into its Wednesday drowsiness. The silence put an end to any last doubts: he was Esteban.

The women who had dressed him, who had combed his hair, had cut his nails and shaved him were
unable to hold back a shudder of pity when they had to resign themselves to his being dragged
along the ground. It was then that they understood how unhappy he must have been with that huge
body since it bothered him even after death. They could see him in life, condemned to going
through doors sideways, cracking his head on crossbeams, remaining on his feet during visits, not
knowing what to do with his soft, pink, sea lion hands while the lady of the house looked for her
most resistant chair and begged him, frightened to death, sit here, Esteban, please, and he, leaning
against the wall, smiling, don't bother, ma'am, I'm fine where I am, his heels raw and his back
roasted from having done the same thing so many times whenever he paid a visit, don't bother,
ma'am, I'm fine where I am, just to avoid the embarrassment of breaking up the chair, and never
knowing perhaps that the ones who said don't go, Esteban, at least wait till the coffee's ready, were
the ones who later on would whisper the big boob finally left, how nice, the handsome fool has
gone. That was what the women were thinking beside the body a little before dawn. Later, when
they covered his face with a handkerchief so that the light would not bother him, he looked so
forever dead, so defenseless, so much like their men that the first furrows of tears opened in their
hearts. It was one of the younger ones who began the weeping. The others, coming to, went from
sighs to wails, and the more they sobbed the more they felt like weeping, because the drowned
man was becoming all the more Esteban for them, and so they wept so much, for he was the more
destitute, most peaceful, and most obliging man on earth, poor Esteban. So, when the men
returned with the news that the drowned man was not from the neighboring villages either, the
women felt an opening of jubilation in the midst of their tears.

'Praise the Lord,' they sighed, 'he's ours!' The men thought the fuss was only womanish frivolity.
Fatigued because of the difficult nighttime inquiries, all they wanted was to get rid of the bother of
the newcomer once and for all before the sun grew strong on that arid, windless day. They
improvised a litter with the remains of foremasts and gaffs, tying it together with rigging so that it
would bear the weight of the body until they reached the cliffs. They wanted to tie the anchor from a
cargo ship to him so that he would sink easily into the deepest waves, where fish are blind and
divers die of nostalgia, and bad currents would not bring him back to shore, as had happened with
other bodies. But the more they hurried, the more the women thought of ways to waste time. They
walked about like startled hens, pecking with the sea charms on their breasts, some interfering on
one side to put a scapular of the good wind on the drowned man, some on the other side to put a
wrist compass on him , and after a great deal of get away from there, woman, stay out of the way,
look, you almost made me fall on top of the dead man, the men began to feel mistrust in their livers
and started grumbling about why so many main-altar decorations for a stranger, because no
matter how many nails and holy-water jars he had on him, the sharks would chew him all the same,
but the women kept piling on their junk relics, running back and forth, stumbling, while they
released in sighs what they did not in tears, so that the men finally exploded with since when has
there ever been such a fuss over a drifting corpse, a drowned nobody, a piece of cold Wednesday
meat. One of the women, mortified by so much lack of care, then removed the handkerchief from
the dead man's face and the men were left breathless too.

He was Esteban. It was not necessary to repeat it for them to recognize him. If they had been told
Sir Walter Raleigh, even they might have been impressed with his gringo accent, the macaw on his
shoulder, his cannibal-killing blunderbuss, but there could be only one Esteban in the world and
there he was, stretched out like a sperm whale, shoeless, wearing the pants of an undersized child,
and with those stony nails that had to be cut with a knife.

They only had to take the handkerchief off his face to see that he was ashamed, that it was not his
fault that he was so big or so heavy or so handsome, and if he had known that this was going to
happen, he would have looked for a more discreet place to drown in, seriously, I even would have
tied the anchor off a galleon around my nick and staggered off a cliff like someone who doesn't like
things in order not to be upsetting people now with this Wednesday dead body, as you people say,
in order not to be bothering anyone with this filthy piece of cold meat that doesn't have anything to
do with me. There was so much truth in his manner that even the most mistrustful men, the ones
who felt the bitterness of endless nights at sea fearing that their women would tire of dreaming
about them and begin to dream of drowned men, even they and others who were harder still
shuddered in the marrow of their bones at Esteban's sincerity. That was how they came to hold the
most splendid funeral they could ever conceive of for an abandoned drowned man. Some women
who had gone to get flowers in the neighboring villages returned with other women who could not
believe what they had been told, and those women went back for more flowers when they saw the
dead man, and they brought more and more until there were so many flowers and so many people
that it was hard to walk about.

At the final moment it pained them to return him to the waters as an orphan and they chose a father
and mother from among the best people, and aunts and uncles and cousins, so that through him all
the inhabitants of the village became kinsmen. Some sailors who heard the weeping from a
distance went off course and people heard of one who had himself tied to the mainmast,
remembering ancient fables about sirens. While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their
shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time
of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as
they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.

They let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he
wished, and they all held their breath for the fraction of centuries the body took to fall into the abyss.
They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they
would never be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their
houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory
could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare
whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died, because they were
going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban's memory eternal and they were
going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs so
that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell
of gardens on the high seas, and the captain would have to come down from the bridge in his dress
uniform, with his astrolabe, his pole star, and his row of war medals and, pointing to the
promontory of roses on the horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the
wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so
bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, over there, that's Esteban's village.

DREAM VARIATIONS
by Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide

In some place of the sun,
to whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me—
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
 ALONE
by: Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking But nobody

Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,

There are some millionaires 'Cause nobody,

With money they can’t use But nobody
Their wives run around like banshees Can make it out here alone.
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors Alone, all alone
To cure their hearts of stone. Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
 THE THINGS WE DARE NOT TO TELL
by: Henry Lawson

The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there,
But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;
Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we're doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell.

There's the old love wronged ere the new was won, there's the light of long ago;
There's the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So, we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we're doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.

We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a heart is breaking there;

Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men's hearts lay bare!
We live and share the living lie, we are doing very well,
While they eat our hearts as the years go by, do the things we dare not tell.

We bow us down to a dusty shrine, or a temple in the East,

Or we stand and drink to the world-old creed, with the coffins at the feast;
We fight it down, and we live it down, or we bear it bravely well,
But the best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.
 Municipal Gum
by Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Gumtree in the city street,

Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seem to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen--
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?
 Clouds on the Sea
By: Ruth Dallas
I walk among men with tall bones,
With shoes of leather, and pink faces,
I meet no man holding a begging bowl,
All have their dwelling places.
In my country
Every child is taught to read or write,
Every child has shoes and a warm coat,
Every child must eat his dinner,
No one must grow any thinner,
It is considered remarkable and not nice
To meet bed bugs and lice.
Oh we live like the rich
With music at the touch of a switch,
Light in the middle of the night,
Water in the house as from a spring,
Hot, if you wish, or cold, anything
For the comfort of the flesh,
In my country. Fragment
Of new skin at the edge of the world’s ulcer.
For the question
That troubled you as you watched the reapers
And a poor woman following,
Gleaning ears on the ground,
Why should I have grain and this woman none?
No satisfactory answer has ever been found.