Whose Child?

By  Peter L. Flom

A child is born.

Whose child is this?

He shall not know his mother's kiss.

He shall not feel his father's arm.

He shall not be kept safe from harm.

A boy now grows.

What shall he be?

A child does not grow like a tree.

He has no roots, he has no leaves.

He feels no grief, he sheds no tears.

A youth is formed, 

Grows straight and tall.

In truth, he is no youth at all.

He suffers no harsh discipline.

He knows no guilt, he cannot sin.

A man is made.

His juices flow.

And who cares where those juices go?

A girl, a car, a well-known street.

10 bucks, 5 minutes, nice and neat.

A child is born.

Whose child is this?

A Walk

By Rainer Maria Rilke

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it
into something else, which, hardly sensing it
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Translated by Robert Bly

Power

By Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

People

By D.H. Lawrence

I like people quite well
at a little distance.
I like to see them passing and passing
and going on their way,
especially if I see their aloneness alive in them.
Yet I don't want them to come near.
If they will only leave me alone
I can still have the illusion that there is room enough in the world.

Boston is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So

By E. B. White

When  I am out of funds and sorts

And life is all in snarls,

I quit New York and travel east

To Boston on the Charles.

In Boston, life is smoother far,

It’s easier and freer,

Where every boy’s a Harvard man

And every man’s a skier.

There’s something in the Boston scene

So innocent, so tranquil,

It takes and holds my interest

The same as any bank will.

For Boston’s not a capital,

And Boston’s not a place;

Rather I think that Boston is

A sort of state of grace.

The people’s lives in Boston

Are flowers blown in glass;

On Commonwealth, on Beacon,

They bow and speak and pass.

No man grows old in Boston,

No lady ever dies;

No youth is ever wicked,

No infant ever cries.

No orthodox Bostonian

Is lonely or dejected,

For everyone in Boston

With everyone’s connected.

So intricate the pattern,

The barroom of the Ritz

Becomes a jigsaw puzzle

Each life a piece that fits.

Each Boston girl is swept along

Down the predestined channel

To where she meets a Boston boy

Alert in Brooksian flannel,

Magnificent in fallen socks,

His hair like stubble weeds,

His elbow patch an earnest of

The fellowship of tweeds.

When Muzak plays in Boston,

It wakes celestial stings,

And I can sit in Boston

And think of many things.

For Boston’s not a capital,

And Boston’s not a place;

Rather I feel that Boston is

The perfect state of grace.

After a week of Boston

I rise and take the train

And I am always very glad

To see New York again.

New York seems doubly beautiful,

Its air as clear as Heaven’s;

New York – where life is always

At sixes and at sevens,

Where no one ever marries right,

And girls go off their trolley,

And young men go to NYU,

To Fordham, and to Poly,

Where hackmen have peculiar names

And relatives afar,

And one can watch the Chrysler spire

Bisect the morning star.

On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City

By Sherman Alexie

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, '
the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? '

and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane,

the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, '
I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born

and before his grandparents' grandparents were born.
I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too,
because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.'
But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to bring her an orange juice

back from the food car. I respect elders
of every color. All I really did was eat
my tasteless sandwich, drink my Diet Pepsi
and nod my head whenever the woman pointed out

another little piece of her country's history
while I, as all Indians have done
since this war began, made plans
for what I would do and say the next time

somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own.

War on Terror

By Aaron Smith

The woman at the DMV wasn't happy
when I asked if I could keep
my old driver’s license and use it
to fight terrorism. She doesn't understand
I'm trying to do my part. Ever since
the president said we can win
the war on terror by not letting fear
stop our lives, I’ve had a new
sense of purpose for the ordinary.
Now every object is an instrument
for freedom; every action is as good
as a Support Our Troops sticker
on a minivan. Yesterday, I was buying
toilet paper at Walgreens, and I upgraded
my four-roll pack to eight because:
Take that! America Haters.
Friday in SoHo, I bought sneakers
and justice for all. I keep doing what
I usually do—returning that polo
to the Gap, putting skim milk
in my coffee—and I have to admit
I feel a whole lot safer in the airport.
Because it’s vacation season
I'm thinking of T-shirts: I Battled
Terrorism on the New River Gorge;
Florida Is for Terror-Fighters! Even
my absence has hope: I can’t take
your call. I’m out of the office
fighting terror. My co-workers
have taken up the cause, too. Annie
was Xeroxing for world peace this
morning, and Jeremy’s mass mailing
is helping find weapons of mass
destruction. After lunch, we sat
by the harbor to let the terror digest
in our stomachs. Committed tourists
stood in a convoluted line to buy
tickets for the statue of liberty, which
looked small today in the distance,
under the blinding, patriotic sun.

I've Been Wandering in the Greenwoods

By Charlotte Bronte

I've been wandering in the greenwoods

And mid flowery smiling plains

I've been listening to the dark floods

To the thrushes thrilling strains

I have gathered the pale primrose

And the purple violet sweet

I've been where the Asphodel grows

And where lives the red deer fleet

I've been to the distant mountain

To the silver singing rill 

By the crystal murmering fountain, 

And the shady verdant hill

I've been where the poplar is springing

From the fair Inamelled ground

Where the nightingale is singing

With a solemn plaintive sound

A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems

II.

A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose,
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go--
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to His work.

Charon the Smith

By Archilochus

Nothing to me the life of Gyges and his glut
Of gold.  I neither envy nor admire him, as
I watch his life and what he does. I want no pride
Of tyranny; it lies far off from where I look.

A New Language

By Casandra Lopez

My words are always
collapsing

upon themselves, they feel too tight
in my mouth. I want a new
language.One with at least
50 words for grief

and 50 words for love, so I can offer
them to the living
who mourn the dead. I want

a language that understands
 sister-pain and heart-hurt. So
when I tell you Brother

is my hook of heart, you will see

the needle threading me to
the others, numbered
men, women and children
of our grit spit city.

I want a language to tell you
about 2010's
37th homicide. The unsolved,
all I know about a man,

my city turned to number,
always sparking memory,

back to longer days when:
Ocean is the mouth
of summer. Our shell fingers
drive into sand, searching–we find

tiny silver sand crabs we scoop and scoop
till we bore and go
in search of tangy seaweed.

We are salted sun. How we brown

 to earth. Our warm flesh flowering,
reminding us of our desert and canyon

blood. In this new language our bones say
sun and sea, reminding us of an old
language our mouths have forgotten, but our
marrow remembers.

Untitled

By Hannah Senesh

One, two, three
Eight feet long,
Two strides across, the rest is dark
Life hangs over me like a question mark.

One, two, three
Maybe another week,
Or next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel, is very near.

I could have been twenty-three next July;
I gambled on what mattered most,
The dice were cast. I lost.


Hannah Senesh died after emigrating from Hungary to Palestine and participating in the resistance effort during the Holocaust.

Mother Tongue

By Dawn Karima Pettigrew

I decolonize myself by laughing.
My soft tongue will break a bone,
Bite apples of gold from settings of silver.
Just 30 pieces will ransom our lives.
Where 40 acres and a mule rule,
My laughter is a salve,
That halves the steps of righteous men,
Ordered, bordered by round dance songs,
Wrongs, righted and set upright
As my giggling heals.
Hear me chuckle on the Trail of Tears
Fear my happy bliss of hope,
Reaching those imprisoned
Mentioning there is, for a little space, grace
And my joy is its balm.

Thrift Shop

By Warren Woessner

I'm going through the rack
of men's trousers
in the musty basement
alongside a tall, skinny guy
I don't want to look at
twice, but he starts to talk:
"Everything in here's a 42
or XX large. Some fat guy
musta died last week."
Just then, I find a nice pair
of corduroys - 36 waist
too long, but I have a friend
who can hem.
I don't try them on, just pay
the $3 and get out.
I know I won't care who
I'm wearing on the white carpet
of snow already unrolling
under all those cold stars.

I Feel Sorry for Jesus

By Naomi Shihab Nye

People won’t leave Him alone.
I know He said, wherever two or more
are gathered in my name…
But I bet some days He regrets it.

Cozily they tell you what he wants
and doesn’t want
as if they just got an e-mail.
Remember “Telephone,” that pass-it-on game

where the message changed dramatically
by the time it rounded the circle?
Well.
People blame terrible pieties on Jesus.

They want to be his special pet.
Jesus deserves better.
I think He’s been exhausted
for a very long time.

He went into the desert, friends.
He didn’t go into the pomp.
He didn’t go into
the golden chandeliers

and say, the truth tastes better here.
See? I’m talking like I know.
It’s dangerous talking for Jesus.
You get carried away almost immediately.

I stood in the spot where He was born.
I closed my eyes where He died and didn’t die.
Every twist of the Via Dolorosa
was written on my skin.

And that makes me feel like being silent
for Him, you know? A secret pouch
of listening. You won’t hear me
mention this again.

A Newborn Girl at Passover

By Nan Cohen

Consider one apricot in a basket of them.
It is very much like all the other apricots--
an individual already, skin and seed.

Now think of this day. One you will probably forget.
The next breath you take, a long drink of air.
Holiday or not, it doesn't matter.

A child is born and doesn't know what day it is.
The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.
The taste of apricots is in store for her.

The sublety of a word

By Claudio Roberto Veale

the sublety of a word
can befriend an ear

the well-timed praise
can open doors long-bolted

but nothing clasps friends
like sweat dirt and hours.

Claudio Roberto Veale lives with his family in South Texas.

The Chuppah

By Marge Piercy

The chuppah stands on four poles.
The home has its four corners.
The chuppah stands on four poles.
The marriage stands on four legs.
Four points loose the winds
that blow on the walls of the house,
the south wind that brings the warm rain,
the east wind that brings the cold rain,
the north wind that brings the cold sun
and the snow, the long west wind
bringing the weather off the far plains.

Here we live open to the seasons.
Here the winds caress and cuff us
contrary and fierce as bears.
Here the winds are caught and snarling
in the pines, a cat in a net clawing
breaking twigs to fight loose.
Here the winds brush your face
soft in the morning as feathers
that float down from a dove’s breast.

Here the moon sails up out of the ocean
dripping like a just washed apple.
Here the sun wakes us like a baby.
Therefore the chuppah has no sides.

It is not a box.
It is not a coffin.
It is not a dead end.
Therefore the chuppah has no walls.
We have made a home together
open to the weather of our time.
We are mills that turn in the winds of struggle
converting fierce energy into bread.

The canopy is the cloth of our table
where we share fruit and vegetables
of our labor, where our care for the earth
comes back and we take its body in ours.
The canopy is the cover of our bed
where our bodies open their portals wide,
where we eat and drink the blood
of our love, where the skin shines red
as a swallowed sunrise and we burn
in one furnace of joy molten as steel
and the dream is flesh and flower.

O my love O my love we dance
under the chuppah standing over us
like an animal on its four legs,
like a table on which we set our love
as a feast, like a tent
under which we work
not safe but no longer solitary
in the searing heat of our time.

Merger

By Judy Chicago

And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another's will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth's abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then will cherish life's creatures
And then all will live in harmony with one another and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.

Everything is waiting for you

By David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into

the conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.