OUR TOWN ~

HOW OUR GOOD OL' 
SMALL VERMONT TOWN 
VOTED

CHEERS THE SOUL

The majority of us all are caught in a foolish way, and most can’t help it, since most of the world is ruled by
the iron first of economics, manipulating every facet of one bad luck turn after another — the ever best and hard working can be swept into debt.
Washed away with a hose. Be forgotten. My aim is mainly at the whole world, blue from space, and my eternal question: why can’t
we all have it better than we do? It’s right there to work with. The earth looks glorious from space. Why not make it so on the ground?
We find many reasons why not.

GABRIELA MISTRAL ~

C H I L D R E N' S     H A I R

Soft hair, hair that is all the softness of the world: without you lying in my

lap, what silk would I enjoy? Sweet the passing day because of that silk, sweet

the sustenance, sweet the ancient sadness, at least for the few hours it slips

between my hands.

     Touch it to my cheek; wind it in my lap like flowers; let me braid it, to

soften my pain, to magnify the light with it, now that it is dying.

     When I am with God someday, I do not want an angel's wing to cool my

heart's bruise; I want, stretched against the sky, the hair of the children I

loved, to let it blow in the wind against my face eternally!

translated by Stephen Tapscott

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, 2002 

 

 Born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga in Vicuna, Chile, in the Equil Valley, April 7, 1889

There are some lovely prose poems in this collection by Mistral to Alfonsina Storni, Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke — not to be missed.