MORE MOSAB ABU TOHA ~

 

Palestinian Village

On the hill in the village, you can chock

the wheels of your vegetable cart

with a stone your grandfather once used

to crush the thyme. Or smash garlic with a

stone your grandmother used as a doorstop.

You can lounge

on a wicker chair near a pomegranate tree,

where a canary never tires of singing.

You can dig a hole with your hands

and find an earthworm breathing

the freshness of soil revived by yesterday's rain.

You can make tea with sage or mint.

If a neighbor or a passerby smells it,

an invitation to join is extended.

You put more cups on your table,

you walk to the garden and pick

more fresh sage or more mint.

~

For a Moment

Her small body rides in my arms

as I run to the hospital.

There is no electricity

and the inner hallways are

a forest lined with cots.

The girl I carry

is dead.

O know that.

The pressure of the explosion

tore apart her thin veins.

I know she is dead,

but everyone who sees us

runs after us.

You are alive

for a moment,

when living people

run after you.

__________________

Mosab Abu Toha

Forest of Noise

Knopf 2024

THE EDITOR, JUDITH JONES ~

 

R E A D   M E

The longtime Knopf editor Judith Jones in her Manhattan apartment in 2007.

Credit...

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY ~

 

There You Are

There you are

this cold day

boiling the water on the stove

pouring the herbs into the pot

hawthorn, rose;

buying the tulips

& looking at them, holding

your heart in your hands at the table

saying please, please, to nobody else

here in the kitchen with you.

How hard, how heavy this all is.

How beautiful, these things you do,

in case they help, these things you do

which, although you haven't said it yet,

say that you want to live. 

CHARLES SIMIC ~

 

R E A D    S O M E    P O E M S

_____________________

Charles Simic

No Land In Sight

Knopf, 2022

RE-READING LANGSTON HUGHES ~

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

                          ( To W. E. B. DuBois )



I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

        flow of human blood in human beings.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.



I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

           went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

           bosom turn all golden in the sunset.




I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.








Cross



My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black.

If ever I cursed my white old man

I take my curses back.



If ever I cursed my black old mother

And wished she were in hell,

I'm sorry for that evil wish

And now I wish her well.



My old man died in a fine big house.

My ma died in a shack.

I wonder where I'm gonna die,

Being neither white nor black?








Epilogue



I, too, sing America,



I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well

And grow strong.



Tomorrow,

I'll sit at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.



Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed, —



I, too, am America.








Poem



We have tomorrow

Bright before us

Like a flame.



Yesterday

A night-gone thing,

A sun-down name.



And dawn-today

Broad arch above the road we came.






__________________
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Knopf 1926

These poems come from Langston Hughes

100 years ago with his first book of poem

The Weary Blues

published by Knopf, a very young press

then, only ten years old, and recently

re-issued with its original 1926 book design

by Miguel Covarrubias.

Ever since George Floyd was murdered

we have sold out every book from our

little bookshop by Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin

and Toni Morrison and George Jackson and

Martin Luther King, and the Black Panthers,

and Malcom X and Audre Lorde and

Lucille Clifton and even MOVE

from dark burned streets of

Philadelphia rose up. A friend

of ours, who worked poetry in

the prisons back in the 80s-90s

told us then she couldn't find a

bookstore that carried any books 

by James Baldwin, and she searched

high and low. No more.

LATE SONG ~

Late Song




Long evening at the end of spring

with soft rain falling and flowing

from the caves into the broken

stone basin outside the window

a blackbird warning of nightfall

coming and I hear again

announcing that it will happen

darkness and the day will be gone

as I heard it all years ago

knowing no more that I know now

but once more I sit and listen

in the same still room to the rain

at the end of spring and again

hear the blackbird in the evening




_________________

W. S. Merwin
The Pupil
Knopf
2001

MARK STRAND ~

When I Turned A Hundred



I wanted to go on an immense journey, to travel night and day

into the unknown until, forgetting my old self, I came into

possession of a new self, one that I might have missed on my

previous travels. But the first step was beyond me. I lay in bed, 

unable to move, pondering, at one does at my age, the ways of

melancholy — how it seeps into the spirit, how it disincarnate

the will, how it banishes the senses to the chill of twilight, how

even the best and worst intentions wither in its keep. I kept

staring at the ceiling, then suddenly felt a blast of cold air, and

I was gone.






Once Upon A Cold November Morning


I left the sunlit fields of my daily life and went down into the

hollow mountain, and there I discovered, in all its chilly glory,

the glass castle of my other life. I could see right through it,

and beyond, but what could I do with it? It was perfect, ire-

ducible, and worthless except for the fact that it existed.






Anywhere Could Be Somewhere


I might have come from the high country, or maybe the low

country, I don't recall which. I might have come from the city,

but what city in what countries beyond me. I might have

come from the outskirts of a city from which others have

come or maybe a city from which only I have come. Who's to

know? Who's to decide if it rained or the sun was out? Who's

to remember? They say things are happening at the border, but

nobody knows which border. They talk of a hotel there, where

it doesn't matter if you forget your suitcase, another will be

waiting, big enough, and just for you.




——————————

Mark Strand
Almost Invisible
Knopf 2012

MUST READING ~

R E A D       M E

Knopf 2018