Thursday, July 29, 2021

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Saturday, July 24, 2021

ROBERT HAYDEN ~

 





Those Winter Sundays



Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.


I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,


Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?



__________________________

Robert Hayden

African American Poetry

250 Years of struggle & song

Kevin Young, editor

Library of America

2020




Friday, July 23, 2021

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Monday, July 19, 2021

PABLO NERUDA~

 




Is the sea there? Tell it to come in.

Bring me

the great bell, one of the green race.

Not that one, the other one, the one that has

a crack in its bronze mouth,

and now, nothing more, I want to be alone

with my essential sea and the bell.

I don't want to speak for a long time,

silence! I still want to learn,

I want to know if I exist.



______________________


PABLO NERUDA

translated by William O'Daly 

THE SEA AND THE BELLS

Copper Canyon Press 2002






Saturday, July 17, 2021

DAVID YOUNG ~

 



Occupational Hazards




      Butcher

If I want to go to pieces

I can do that. When I try

to pull myself together

I get sausage.



      Bakers

Can't be choosers. Rising

from a white bed, from dreams

of kings, bright cities, buttocks,

to see the moon by daylight.



      Tailor

It's not the way the needle

drags the poor thread around.

It's sewing the monster together,

my misshapen son.



      Gravediggers

To be the baker's dark opposite,

to dig the anti-cake, to stow

the sinking loaves in the unoven —

then to be dancing on the job!



      Woodcutter

Deep in my hands

as far as I can go

the fallen trees

keep ringing.



_________________

David Young

The Names of a Hare in English

Pittsburgh 1979





Friday, July 16, 2021

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Monday, July 12, 2021

EDWIN MUIR ~

 




The Animals



They do not live in the world,

And not in time and space.

From birth to death hurled

No word do they have, not one

To plant a foot upon,

Were never in any place.


For with names the world was called

Out of the empty air,

With names was built and walled,

Line and circle and square,

Dust and emerald;

Snatched from deceiving death

By the articulate breath.


But these have never trod

Twice the familiar track,

Never never turned back

Into the memorized day.

All is new and near

In the unchanging Here

Of the fifith great day of God,

That shall remain the same,

Never shall pass away.


On the sixth day we came.



______________________

Edwin Muir

One Foot In Eden

Grove 1958




Friday, July 9, 2021

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Sunday, July 4, 2021

Saturday, July 3, 2021

GIL SCOTT-HERON ~

 





"BLACK WAX"

A film by Robert Mugge

1983

W A T C H





Friday, July 2, 2021

TED JOANS ~

 




The Truth




IF YOU SHOULD SEE A MAN


walking down a crowded


street

     talking

                  ALOUD


TO HIMSELF


            DON'T RUN


                                           IN THE


OPPOSITE DIRECTION


                                        BUT RUN


TOWARD HIM


                    for he is a


                                         POET


you have NOTHING to

                                          FEAR


FROM THE


                  POET

                          BUT THE


               TRUTH  



_____________________________

Ted Joans (1928-2003)

African American Poetry

250 Years of struggle & song

edited by Kevin Young

Library of America

2020