Written by
Nazim Hikmet |
I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some about fish
I know separation
some people know the names of the stars by heart
I recite absences
I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food
I haven't tasted
at thirty they wanted to hang me
at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize
which they did
at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year
at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours
I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24
in '61 the tomb I visit is his books
they tried to tear me away from my party
it didn't work
nor was I crushed under the falling idols
in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death
in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken heart
waiting to die
I was jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit
I deceived my women
I never talked my friends' backs
I drank but not every day
I earned my bread money honestly what happiness
out of embarrassment for others I lied
I lied so as not to hurt someone else
but I also lied for no reason at all
I've ridden in trains planes and cars
most people don't get the chance
I went to opera
most people haven't even heard of the opera
and since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people visit
mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
but I've had my coffee grounds read
my writings are published in thirty or forty languages
in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned
cancer hasn't caught up with me yet
and nothing says it will
I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that
and I wouldn't want such a life
nor did I go to war
or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night
and I never had to take to the road under diving planes
but I fell in love at almost sixty
in short comrades
even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief
I can say I've lived like a human being
and who knows
how much longer I'll live
what else will happen to me
This autobiography was written
in east Berlin on 11 September 1961
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Written by
John Matthew |
You hide your face in shame,
But I can see your private parts,
Have you no contrition,
To expose yourself, shamelessly, thus?
Tell me what does it feel,
To be watched while you strain?
Is that why you hang your head in shame;
Has all embarrassment left you?
I know it’s hard; you need your money,
But couldn’t you put the money —
You spend on spirits and tobacco,
To use that public facility on the street corner?
Is it communion with nature you seek?
Or the pleasure of shocking,
Young children, and pubescent girls?
Your revenge, your wretchedness!
If it’s your laziness, unforgivable indolence,
And reluctance to pay Rupee two,
And wash with dignity in that public facility,
Then bury your face, wretch, and die in shame.
|
Written by
Robert Lowell |
1
Only today and just for this minute,
when the sunslant finds its true angle,
you can see yellow and pinkish leaves spangle
our gentle, fluffy tree—
suddenly the green summer is momentary...
Autumn is my favorite season—
why does it change clothes and withdraw?
This week the house went on the market—
suddenly I woke up among strangers;
when I go into a room, it moves
with embarrassment, and joins another room.
I don't need conversation, but you to laugh with—
you and a room and a fire,
cold starlight blowing through an open window—
whither?
2
After sunfall, heaven is melodramatic,
a temporary, puckering, burning green.
The patched-up oak
and blacker, indelible pines
have the indigestible meagerness of spines.
One wishes heaven had less solemnity:
a sensual table
with five half-filled bottles of red wine
set round the hectic carved roast—
Bohemia for ourselves
and the familiars of a lifetime
charmed to communion by resurrection—
running together in the rain to mail a single letter,
not the chafe and cling
of this despondent chaff.
3
Yet for a moment, the children
could play truant from their tuition.
4
When I look back, I see a collapsing
accordion of my receding houses,
and myself receding
to a boy of twenty-five or thirty,
too shopworn for less, too impressionable for more—
blackmaned, illmade
in a washed blue workshirt and coalblack trousers,
moving from house to house,
still seeking a boy's license
to see the countryside without arrival.
Hell?
Darling,
terror in happiness may not cure the hungry future,
the time when any illness is chronic,
and the years of discretion are spent on complaint—
until the wristwatch is taken from the wrist.
|
Written by
Stephen Dunn |
When Mother died
I thought: now I'll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable.
Yet I've since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who've been loved by their mothers.
I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she'd live,
how many lifetimes there are
in the sweet revisions of memory.
It's hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,
but I remembered when I was twelve,
1951, before the world
unbuttoned its blouse.
I had asked my mother (I was trembling)
If I could see her breasts
and she took me into her room
without embarrassment or coyness
and I stared at them,
afraid to ask for more.
Now, years later, someone tells me
Cancers who've never had mother love
are doomed and I, a Cancer
feel blessed again. What luck
to have had a mother
who showed me her breasts
when girls my age were developing
their separate countries,
what luck
she didn't doom me
with too much or too little.
Had I asked to touch,
Perhaps to suck them,
What would she have done?
Mother, dead woman
Who I think permits me
to love women easily
this poem
is dedicated to where
we stopped, to the incompleteness
that was sufficient
and to how you buttoned up,
began doing the routine things
around the house.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Bishop |
Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady's hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist
in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.
Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps
with exhibitionistic screech,
the visors hanging o'er the ear
so that the golden anchors drag,
--the tides of fashion never lag.
Such caps may not be worn next year.
Or you who don the paper plate
itself, and put some grapes upon it,
or sport the Indian's feather bonnet,
--perversities may aggravate
the natural madness of the hatter.
And if the opera hats collapse
and crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,
he thinks what might a miter matter?
Unfunny uncle, you who wore a
hat too big, or one too many,
tell us, can't you, are there any
stars inside your black fedora?
Aunt exemplary and slim,
with avernal eyes, we wonder
what slow changes they see under
their vast, shady, turned-down brim.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Embarrassment of one another
And God
Is Revelation's limit,
Aloud
Is nothing that is chief,
But still,
Divinity dwells under a seal.
|
Written by
Omar Khayyam |
Thou hast put in us an irresistible passion [which is
equivalent to an order from Thee], and, on the other
hand, forbiddest us to give way to it. Poor human
beings are in extreme embarrassment between this order
and this prohibition, for it is as if Thou commandest me
to upset the cup but refrain from spilling the contents.
|
Written by
Rabindranath Tagore |
Reverend sir, forgive this pair of
sinners. Spring winds to-day are
blowing in wild eddies, driving dust
and dead leaves away, and with them
your lessons are all lost.
Do not say, father, that life is a
vanity.
For we have made truce with death
for once, and only for a few fragrant
hours we two have been made immortal.
Even if the king's army came and
fiercely fell upon us we should sadly
shake our heads and say, Brothers,
you are disturbing us. If you must
have this noisy game, go and clatter
your arms elsewhere. Since only for
a few fleeting moments we have been
made immortal.
If friendly people came and flocked
around us, we should humbly bow to
them and say, This extravagant good
fortune is an embarrassment to us.
Room is scarce in the infinite sky
where we dwell. For in the spring-
time flowers come in crowds, and the
busy wings of bees jostle each other.
Our little heaven, where dwell only
we two immortals, is too absurdly
narrow.
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