Written by
Walt Whitman |
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after
deeds
done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt,
desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these
sights on
the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be
kill’d, to
preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor,
and
upon
*******, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
1
NOW list to my morning’s romanza—I tell the signs of the Answerer;
To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me.
A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother;
How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother?
Tell him to send me the signs.
And I stand before the young man face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand,
and his
left
hand in my right hand,
And I answer for his brother, and for men, and I answer for him that answers for all, and
send
these
signs.
2
Him all wait for—him all yield up to—his word is decisive and final,
Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light,
Him they immerse, and he immerses them.
Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals,
The profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean, (so tell I my morning’s
romanza;)
All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy,
The best farms—others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps,
The noblest and costliest cities—others grading and building, and he domiciles there;
Nothing for any one, but what is for him—near and far are for him, the ships in the
offing,
The perpetual shows and marches on land, are for him, if they are for any body.
He puts things in their attitudes;
He puts to-day out of himself, with plasticity and love;
He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations,
employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command
them.
He is the answerer:
What can be answer’d he answers—and what cannot be answer’d, he shows how
it
cannot
be answer’d.
3
A man is a summons and challenge;
(It is vain to skulk—Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical
echoes?)
Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down,
seeking
to
give satisfaction;
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.
Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely,
by
day or
by night;
He has the pass-key of hearts—to him the response of the prying of hands on the
knobs.
His welcome is universal—the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he
is;
The person he favors by day, or sleeps with at night, is blessed.
4
Every existence has its idiom—everything has an idiom and tongue;
He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and
any
man
translates himself also;
One part does not counteract another part—he is the joiner—he sees how they
join.
He says indifferently and alike, How are you, friend? to the President at his
levee,
And he says, Good-day, my brother! to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,
And both understand him, and know that his speech is right.
He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol,
He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another, Here is our equal,
appearing
and new.
Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has follow’d
the
sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them;
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has follow’d it,
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.
The English believe he comes of their English stock,
A Jew to the Jew he seems—a Russ to the Russ—usual and near, removed from none.
Whoever he looks at in the traveler’s coffee-house claims him,
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and
the
island
Cuban is sure;
The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St.
Lawrence, or
Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him.
The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood;
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of
him—he strangely transmutes them,
They are not vile any more—they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.
|
Written by
Robert Pinsky |
A monosyllabic European called Sax
Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted
Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating
Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone
Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting
Infinitely upward through an upturned
Swollen golden bell rimmed
Like a gloxinia flowering
In Sax's Belgian imagination
And in the unfathomable matrix
Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven
Humming into the cells of the body
Or cupped in the resonating grail
Of memory changed and exchanged
As in the trading of brasses,
Pearls and ivory, calicos and slaves,
Laborers and girls, two
Cousins in a royal family
Of Niger known as the Birds or Hawks.
In Christendom one cousin's child
Becomes a "favorite *****" ennobled
By decree of the Czar and founds
A great family, a line of generals,
Dandies and courtiers including the poet
Pushkin, killed in a duel concerning
His wife's honor, while the other cousin sails
In the belly of a slaveship to the port
Of Baltimore where she is raped
And dies in childbirth, but the infant
Will marry a Seminole and in the next
Chorus of time their child fathers
A great Hawk or Bird, with many followers
Among them this great-grandchild of the Jewish
Manager of a Pushkin estate, blowing
His American breath out into the wiggly
Tune uncurling its triplets and sixteenths--the Ginza
Samba of breath and brass, the reed
Vibrating as a valve, the aether, the unimaginable
Wires and circuits of an ingenious box
Here in my room in this house built
A hundred years ago while I was elsewhere:
It is like falling in love, the atavistic
Imperative of some one
Voice or face--the skill, the copper filament,
The golden bellful of notes twirling through
Their invisible element from
Rio to Tokyo and back again gathering
Speed in the variations as they tunnel
The twin haunted labyrinths of stirrup
And anvil echoing here in the hearkening
Instrument of my skull.
|
Written by
Robert Frost |
Afield at dusk
What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the nighthawks peopling heaven,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memor of one absent, most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.
|
Written by
Rafael Guillen |
I came with the rising sun and I've brought
nothing but two eyes, all I have,
simply two eyes, for the harvest
of grief that's hidden in this jungle
like the coffee shrubs.
Fewer,
but they fling themselves upwards, untouchable,
are the trees that invidiously shut out
the light from this overwhelming indigence.
With my machete I go through the paths
of the cafetal.
Intricate paths
where the tamags lies in wait, sunk
in the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics,
the carnal luxury that gleams
in the eyes of the Creole overseer; sinuous
paths between junipers and avocados
where human thought, cowed
since before the white man, has never
found any other light than the well
of Quich; blind; drowning in itself.
Picking berries, the guanacos
hope only for a snort to free them
from the cafetal.
Through the humid shade beneath
the giant ceibas, Indian women
in all colors crawl like ants, one
behind the other, with the load balanced
on a waking sleep.
They don't exist.
They've never been born
and still they are dying daily, rubbed raw,
turned to wet earth with the plantation,
hunkered for days in the road to watch over the man
eternally blasted on booze, as good as dead
from one rain to the next, under the shrubs
of the cafetal.
The population has disappeared
into the coffee bean, and a tide of white lightning
seeps in to cover them.
I stretch out a hand, pluck
the red berry, submit it to the test
of water, scrub it, wait for the fermentation
of the sweet pulp to release the bean.
How many centuries, now? How much misery
does it cost to become a man? How much mourning?
With a few strokes of the rake, the stripped bean
dries in the sun.
It crackles, and I feel it
under my feet.
Eternal drying shed
of the cafetal!
Backwash of consciousness,
soul sown with corn-mush and corn cobs,
blood stained with the black native dye.
Man below.
Above, the volcanos.
Guatemala throws me to my knees
while every afternoon, with rain and thunder,
Tohil the Powerful lashes
this newly-arrived back.
Lamentation
is the vegetal murmur, tender
of the cafetal.
Glossary:
Cafetal: a coffee plantation
tamag?s: a venomous serpent
guanaco: a pack animal, used insultingly to indicate the native laborers
ceiba: a tall tropical hardwood tree
|
Written by
Matthew Arnold |
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity--
Of toil unsever'd from tranquility!
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,
Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone.
|
Written by
Gary Snyder |
Smokey the Bear Sutra
Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.
"In some future time, there will be a continent called
America. It will have great centers of power called
such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."
"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."
And he showed himself in his true form of
SMOKEY THE BEAR
•A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and
watchful.
•Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless
attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
•His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display -- indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;
•Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a
civilization that claims to save but often destroys;
•Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that guard the Wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true paths lead through mountains --
•With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of
those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;
•Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;
•Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing the worms of capitalism and
totalitarianism;
•Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes;
master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten
trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.
Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will
Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or
slander him,
HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.
Thus his great Mantra:
Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana
Sphataya hum traka ham nam
"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND
BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED"
And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,
Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick
people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:
And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,
or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out
with his vajra-shovel.
•Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.
•Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
•Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
•Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
•Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.
•AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.
thus have we heard.
|
Written by
Robinson Jeffers |
They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down
here in an iron car
On a long cable; here the ships warped in
And took their loads from the engine, the water
is deep to the cliff.
The car
Hangs half way over in the gape of the gorge,
Stationed like a north star above the peaks of
the redwoods, iron perch
For the little red hawks when they cease from
hovering
When they've struck prey; the spider's fling of a
cable rust-glued to the pulleys.
The laborers are gone, but what a good multitude
Is here in return: the rich-lichened rock, the
rose-tipped stone-crop, the constant
Ocean's voices, the cloud-lighted space.
The kilns are cold on the hill but here in the
rust of the broken boiler
Quick lizards lighten, and a rattle-snake flows
Down the cracked masonry, over the crumbled
fire-brick.
In the rotting timbers
And roofless platforms all the free companies
Of windy grasses have root and make seed; wild
buckwheat blooms in the fat
Weather-slacked lime from the bursted barrels.
Two duckhawks darting in the sky of their cliff-hung
nest are the voice of the headland.
Wine-hearted solitude, our mother the wilderness,
Men's failures are often as beautiful as men's
triumphs, but your returnings
Are even more precious than your first presence.
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