Far away, far away, men making wars.
Other folk's blood spilt on other folk's floors.
Only this morning I wounded my finger:
a thorn on my rosebush pierced like a stinger.
Sucking that finger, I thought of the war.
Sad is the earth! And those people, so poor!
I'm of no help, being here and not there,
nor can I reach them, by sea or by air.
And what if I could — what good could I do?
My Arabic's terrible! My English is, too!
They had questioned him for hours. Who exactly was he? And when
He told them, they questioned him again. When they accepted who he was, as
Someone not involved, they pulled out his fingernails. Then
They took him to a waste-ground somewhere near the Horseshoe Bend, and told him
What he was. They shot him nine times.
Your body, hard vowels
In a soft dress, is still.
What you can't know
is that after you died
All the black poets
In New York City
Took a deep breath,
And breathed you out;
Dark corners of small clubs,
The silence you left twitching
On the floors of the gigs
You turned your back on,
The balled-up fists of notes
Flung, angry from a keyboard.
You won't be able to hear us
Try to etch what rose
Off your eyes, from your throat.
The bread has become moldy
and the dates blown down by the wind;
the iron has slipped from the helve.
The wool was to by dyed red
but the dyer dyed it black.
The dead woman has forgotten her comb
and tube of eye-paint;
the dead cobbler has forgotten his knife,
the dead butcher his chopper,
and the dead carpenter his adze.
A goat can be driven off with a shout.
But where is the man to shout?
The bricks pile up, the laths are trimmed,
and the beams are ready. Where is the builder?
Señora, it is true the Greeks are dead.
It is true also that we here are Americans:
That we use the machines: that a sight of the god is unusual:
That more people have more thoughts: that there are
Progress and science and tractors and revolutions and
Marx and the wars more antiseptic and murderous
And music in every home: there is also Hoover.
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
He didn’ t know, King Kleomenis, he didn’ t dare —
he just didn’ t know how to tell his mother
a thing like that: Ptolemy’ s demand,
to guarantee their treaty, that she too go to Egypt
and be held there as a hostage —
a very humiliating, indecorous thing.
And he would be about to speak yet always hesitate,
would start to tell her yet always stop.
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.
When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone,
Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one
(For who is sure he hath a soul, unless
It see, and judge, and follow worthiness,
And by deeds praise it? He who doth not this,
May lodge an inmate soul, but 'tis not his)
When that queen ended here her progress time,
And, as t'her standing house, to heaven did climb,
Where loath to make the saints attend her long,
She's now a part both of the choir, and song;
This world, in that great earthquake languished;
Night, the fat serpent, slipped among the plants,
Intent upon the apples of his eyes;
A heavy bandoleer hung like a prize
Around his neck, and tropical red ants
Mounted his body, and he heard advance,
Little by little, the thin female cries
Of mortar shells. He thought of Paradise.
Such is the vision that extremity grants.
