Written by
Richard Wilbur |
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?--
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face?
Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,
If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip
On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.
Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
(1) the ordinary
you are not interested in me
a receiver of food and a giver of ****
my brain knuckled under
i have rendered the skills of my
limbs to generations of caesars
and caesar's gods have siphoned off my spirit
by day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers
my own pieces travel through the night yearning for union
in every land i am the bulk
the bricks you build with
in every land mine is the back that bends
the face that gets shoved in the earth
i am told how costly it is to allow me to breathe
i am not told how much your palaces (private or stately) depend on
my breathing
i must eat so that i may be eaten
i must labour so that others may find space for their estates
i am grasses told to lie down as lawn
i am shrubs being clipped into hedges
i am weeds being torn out of lines
i am dirt being churned into mud
i am mat that must always be shaken
but choke me i must breathe
crush me i must rise
wipe me out i am everywhere
whip me my blood runs into air
destroy me i shall run out of doors
my fingers root in the earth and shoot stars
(2) loud hosannas (and a bowl of cherries) to the ordinary
ordinary holds the world
in a hat - it is a grey hat
(grey - if you can but see it -
is the brightest of colours)
the world hates its grey sky
endlessly moaning
what a gloomy day
how mediocre
but ordinary holds the world
it's about time someone
gave loud hosannas
(and a bowl of cherries)
to the ordinary
without it the sky
loses its air
fields give up grass
meals do without salt
bodies have no skin
blood mourns its arteries
language has no tongue
at the foot of mountains
there is no earth
ordinary has been kicked
in the teeth (and of course
in the privates) every
second of every
minute of every
hour of every
day of every
week of every
month of every
year of existence
and every second of every
etc. ordinary sits up
a grin bubbling through
its spilled blood (and
of course keeping
its privates to itself)
and simply says
i am i am
i am i am i am
wham
more
blood and
another
grin
etc
ordinary is where it all
started and where it is
eternally - square one the
universal square
one or two
claim to have reached
square one and a half - they
slip back but they
eventually slip back
their arses red
with shame
no man can
put his foot down where
there is no banana skin
the ordinary runs
down to the sea and
without trying
encompasses all views
blends all colours
and (in the end) copes
quietly with death
poets spend a lifetime
in their songs
hoping (not daring)
to touch it
it is wellwater
the mountain spring
the stream running
throughout man
bathing his wounds
cooling his fevers
it is the untransplantable heart
it speaks all languages
it eludes science
it wracks art
it is the lavatory the fool
and the wise man share
it discerns truly
man if you are not ordinary
you are a bloated
nothing
when you burst you spill
your ordinary intestines
and in no time
your stink is
assuaged by the stream
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Written by
Henry Lawson |
With eyes that are narrowed to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the blaze of hot days, and the fierce
White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor'ward,
Bronzed, bearded, and gaunt on the track,
Low-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
The Christ of the Outer Out-back.
For the cause that will ne'er be relinquished
Despite all the cynics on earth---
In the ranks of the bush undistinguished
By manner or dress---if by birth;
God's preacher, of churches unheeded---
God's vineyard, though barren the sod---
Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed,
Rough link 'twixt the bushman and God.
He works where the hearts of a nation
Are withered in flame from the sky,
Where the sinners work out their salvation
In a hell-upon-earth ere they die.
In the camp or the lonely hut lying
In a waste that seems out of God's sight,
He's the doctor---the mate of thee dying
Through the smothering heat of the night.
By his work in the hells of the shearers,
Where the drinking is ghastly and grim,
Where the roughest and worst of his hearers
Have listened bareheaded to him;
By his paths through the parched desolation,
Hot rides, and the long, terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
Of his work in the farthermost camps;
By his worth in the light that shall search men
And prove---ay! and justify---each,
I place him in front of all churchmen
Who feel not, who know not---but preach!
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