poetic faith

sixteen

We are the cells that make up god
Us and the mushroom spores
The cuttlefish and arthropods

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes, 'Let America be America Again'

After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

Emily Dickinson, '341'

fifteen

Like glasses wildered by
Every leaf as they
Pass by the park, I see
You edged clearly and I
Stint at formality,
And at time, that modern
Medicine through which we
Switch lenses between us
Until we lose all sense
Of ambiguity.

Il est l’affection et le présent puisqu’il a fait la maison ouverte à l’hiver écumeux et à la rumeur de l’été—lui qui a purifié les boissons et les aliments—lui qu’est le charme des lieux fuyant et le délice surhumain des stations.—Il est l’affection et l’avenir, la force et l’amour que nous, debout dans les rages et les ennuis, nous voyons passer dans le ciel de tempête et les drapeaux d’extase.

Il est l’amour, mesure parfaite et réinventée, raison merveilleuse et imprévue, et l’éternité: machine aimée des qualités fatales. Nous avons tous eu l’épouvante de sa concession et de la nétre: o jouissance de notre santé, élan de nos facultés, affection égoïste et passion pour lui,—lui qui nous aime pour sa vie infinie…

Et nous nous le rappelons et il voyage…Et si l’Adoration s’en va, sonne, sa Promesse, sonne: "Arrière ces superstitions, ces anciens corps, ces ménages et ces ages. C’est cette époque-ci qui a sombré!"

Il ne s’en ira pas, il ne redescendra pas d’un ciel, il n’accomplira pas la rédemption des colères de femmes et des gaîtés des hommes et de tout ce péché: car c’est fait, lui étant, et étant aimé.

O ses souffles, ses têtes, ses courses; la terrible célérité de la perfection des formes et de l’action.

O fécondité de l’esprit et immensité de l’univers!

Son corps! Le dégagement rêvé, le brisement de la grâce croisée de violence nouvelle!

Sa vue, sa vue! tous les agenouillages anciens et les peines relevés à sa suite.

Son jour! l’abolition de toutes souffrances sonores et mouvantes dans la musique plus intense.

Son pas! les migrations plus énormes que les anciennes invasions.

O Lui et nous! l’orgueil plus bienveillant que les charités perdues.

O monde!—et le chant clair des malheurs nouveaux!

Il nous a connu tous et nous a tous aimé, sachons, cette nuit d’hiver, de cap en cap, du pôle tumultueux au château, de la foule à la plage, de regards en regards, forces et sentiments las, le héler et le voir, et le renvoyer, et sous les marées et au haut des déserts de neige, suivre ses vues,—ses souffles—son corps,—son jour.

Arthur Rimbaud, 'Génie'

fourteen

In the beginning is consciousness;
Communication is chemical.
In the Spring our movements are small
And slow.  The wind's the source,
Of us; and insects, the
Buzzing intermediary sex,
Like my hands touch you while
Your soul is fixed, but it stoops to be
Violated by a butterfly.

thirteen

Like a honeybee you are my work and my food. 
I spend myself flying and dancing to get you. 
In the winter a whole hive of me lives on you.

twelve

When you leave in the morning, my
Internal geometry twists
Helical, and tenses into
A bright coil of potential.

When you return I expect to
Spring up and unloosen, but
Instead the torsion recoils
Inward, the energy dissipates,
I am ashamed of my density,
And I am myself, only smaller.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor
    your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
    geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor
    Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still
    small voice vibrating--America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the
    quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland--
    Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the
    peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart
    pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Walt Whitman, 'Election Day, November, 1884 '

eleven

If I could make my own Greek urn
I would inscribe this on it:
Someday aliens will mold our plastic for us.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
    Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
    And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
    So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
    And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
    With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
    Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
    Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
    And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
    And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
    A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,
    And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
    And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
    And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
    I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
    And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
    So kiss'd to sleep. ;

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
    And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
    On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
    Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merci
    Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
    With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
    On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here
    Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
    And no birds sing.

John Keats, 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'

ten

Love is a recurrent choice and
A continuous act of will.
No matter what the dramatists
Propose, it is not a careless
Arrow.  Though you may choose rashly,
And come to regret, that reflects
On your judgment and not on love.

The Soul selects her own Society --
Then -- shuts the Door --
To her divine Majority --
Present no more --

Unmoved -- she notes the Chariots -- pausing --
At her low Gate --
Unmoved -- an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat --

I've known her -- from an ample nation --
Choose One --
Then -- close the Valves of her attention --
Like Stone --

Emily Dickinson, 303

nine

Take back your sonnetry;
Free Verse is Slavery!

eight

Last night I dreamed about kissing;
Not surprising.  But who?
Though lips and faces change, I find
My mind populated
With facets of you. Though I meet
Old men and young, strangers
Imaginary, friends, lovers,
Fathers; all clothe your soul
As apprehended.  I'm afraid
All men -- proleptically
Sited, and from reality
Filtered -- are become you.

seven

Winds cast clouds over the city
In frozen waves, in rows of foam.
Autumn in the ash tree flashes
Like sunshine flashes on the Charles,

And the maple is lit up like
Lanterns in Carnation, Lily,
Lily, Rose.  The light of dried leaves
Is pleasing, like poetry.

I dream'd that, as I wander'd by the way,   
  Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring;
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
  Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
  Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kiss'd it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets;
  Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
  Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
  Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
  Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour'd May,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine
  Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day;   
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
  With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray;
And flowers, azure, black, and streak'd with gold,
Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge
  There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank'd with white,
And starry river-buds among the sedge,
  And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
  With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
  I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
  Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprison'd children of the Hours
  Within my hand;—and then, elate and gay,
I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it—O! to whom?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'The Question'

six

We glide seated over
     the streets, solfege on the
stereo.  Bulldozers
     wave giant insect joints,
the willow's hand on the
     overpass, grey windows
scraped in stripes by the sky,
     and a trailer empty of
shells are September here.

Where do stars come from?
Where do stars come from?
I think the sea.
They are brightly colored starfish
But how can that be!
When a sea storm happens,
Many starfish die,
And don't quite make it to heaven
And just lie in the sky.

Jennifer Pease, 1976

This day is mine.
May I remember this
and look for something new,
something perhaps I've
stared at all my life
and never seen.

There's music and
there's love and wit and
something that can lift
the mind.

May I discover these
and know the light's
not false and foreign
when I go
toward wonder.

Raymond John Baughan, 'fifteen'

five - revised

My heart is made of wax and pins.
It's plastic to a point;
But if you fashion too far in,
You'll get stuck!