Written by
Carl Sandburg |
THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
so here we are at last at the ten-boy
never to be the single-figure-aged-again boy
and all the trailing clouds that cling to the not-big child
can be blown away - you're up in your own sky now
clear-blue on some days (if on others windy and wild)
now you'll have to see yourself as the tall-boy
the take-it-on-the-chin and care-for-all boy
and looking at what's to be done and getting down
to doing it without boring parents laying down the law
it's your walk from hereon to your own new town
then you'll be able to grow into that free-boy
not hankering to be that sit-on-your-mother's-knee boy
and you'll find yourself with keys to fit in every door
you've been denied or dreamed of (keys towards the man)
and a richer jack will sprout from the jack you were before
so aquarian and water-dog and feb-the-fourth-boy
the i've-got-to-figure-out-my-south-from-north-boy
now you've double-jumped may your life bloom well
be kind to sweet matthew and let that deep sun shine
that's been nuzzling inside you in its young-boy shell
and we wish a happy birthday to the ten-boy
to the video-games and freaky-foresters'-den-boy
to the boy who takes pity on his dad's bald head
whose laziness is legion - seasoned with sharp wit
a boy who's perfect when he's fast asleep in bed
and awake not quite an angel but at least well-fed
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Written by
C S Lewis |
No.
It's an impudent falsehood.
Men did not
Invariably think the newer way Prosaic
mad, inelegant, or what not.
Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot
Upon the church? Did anybody say How
modern and how ugly? They did not.
Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,
Were these at first a horror? They were not.
If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food
All set us hankering after yesterday,
Need this be only an archaising mood?
Why, any man whose purse has been let blood
By sharpers, when he finds all drained away
Must compare how he stands with how he stood.
If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude
Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway
All that I can't do now, all that I could?
So, when our guides unanimously decry
The backward glance, I think we can guess why.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
october stops the pretence
that somehow summer
should still be loitering around
it walks through the garden
hanging the spiders up
between fences and flowers
it throws rather more dew
on the ground than is
good for the shoes and then
has the nerve to let on
frost is sniffing its way
southwards - some mornings
it can be caught at the windows
looking in with a shrug
it's spotted a shiver or two
hankering in shadows
for the heat-switch - all's
on the shift inwards - colours
bunch into their deeper shades
here's where the year gets used
to growing older and for
the first time with nowhere
desperate to go (and nothing
to prove) admits what it is
and strolls in a blithe sort
of way towards all hallows
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Written by
Wallace Stevens |
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.
Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle.
That's clear.
But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets.
Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones.
And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began.
Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince.
But fictive things
Wink as they will.
Wink most when widows wince.
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Written by
Wallace Stevens |
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.
Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle.
That's clear.
But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets.
Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones.
And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began.
Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince.
But fictive things
Wink as they will.
Wink most when widows wince.
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Written by
Siegfried Sassoon |
Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns;
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.
You’d think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they’ve been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.
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Written by
Claude McKay |
I
All night, through the eternity of night,
Pain was my potion though I could not feel.
Deep in my humbled heart you ground your heel,
Till I was reft of even my inner light,
Till reason from my mind had taken flight,
And all my world went whirling in a reel.
And all my swarthy strength turned cold like steel,
A passive mass beneath your puny might.
Last night I gave you triumph over me,
So I should be myself as once before,
I marveled at your shallow mystery,
And haunted hungrily your temple door.
I gave you sum and substance to be free,
Oh, you shall never triumph any more!
II
I do not fear to face the fact and say,
How darkly-dull my living hours have grown,
My wounded heart sinks heavier than stone,
Because I loved you longer than a day!
I do not shame to turn myself away
From beckoning flowers beautifully blown,
To mourn your vivid memory alone
In mountain fastnesses austerely gray.
The mists will shroud me on the utter height,
The salty, brimming waters of my breast
Will mingle with the fresh dews of the night
To bathe my spirit hankering to rest.
But after sleep I'll wake with greater might,
Once more to venture on the eternal quest.
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
GALOOTS, you hairy, hankering,
Snousle on the bones you eat, chew at the gristle and lick the last of it.
Grab off the bones in the paws of other galoots—hook your claws in their sleazy mouths—snap and run.
If long-necks sit on their rumps and sing wild cries to the winter moon, chasing their tails to the flickers of foolish stars … let ’em howl.
Galoots fat with too much, galoots lean with too little, galoot millions and millions, snousle and snicker on, plug your exhausts, hunt your snacks of fat and lean, grab off yours.
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