Written by
Alice Walker |
(Thinking of Lorraine Hansberry)
We must say it all, and as clearly
Trying to bury us.
As we can.
For, even before we are dead,
Were we black? Were we women? Were we gay?
Were we the wrong shade of black? Were we yellow?
Did we, God forbid, love the wrong person, country?
Or politics? Were we Agnes Smedley or John Brown?
But, most of all, did we write exactly what we saw,
As clearly as we could? Were we unsophisticated
Enough to cry and scream?
Well, then, they will fill our eyes,
Our ears, our noses and our mouths
With the mud
Of oblivion.
They will chew up
Our fingers in the night.
They will pick
Their teeth with our pens.
They will sabotage
Both our children
And our art.
Because when we show what we see,
They will discern the inevitable:
We do not worship them.
We do not worship them.
We do not worship what they have made.
We do not trust them.
We do not believe what they say.
We do not love their efficiency.
Or their power plants.
We do not love their factories.
Or their smog.
We do not love their television programs.
Or their radioactive leaks.
We find their papers boring.
We do not worship their cars.
We do not worship their blondes.
We do not worship their penises.
We do not think much
Of their Renaissance
We are indifferent to England.
We have grave doubts about their brains.
In short, we who write, paint, sculpt, dance
Or sing
Share the intelligence and thus the fate
Of all our people
In this land.
We are not different from them,
Neither above nor below,
Outside nor inside.
We are the same.
And we do not worship them.
We do not worship them.
We do not worship their movies.
We do not worship their songs.
We do not think their newscasts
Cast the news.
We do not admire their president.
We know why the White House is white.
We do not find their children irresistible;
We do not agree they should inherit the earth.
But lately you have begun to help them
Bury us.
You who said: King was just a womanizer;
Malcom, just a thug; Sojourner, folksy; Hansberry,
A traitor (or whore, depending); Fannie Lou Hamer,
merely spunky; Zora Hurston, Nella Larsen, Toomer:
reactionary, brainwashed, spoiled by whitefolks, minor;
Agnes Smedley, a spy.
I look into your eyes;
You are throwing in the dirt.
You, standing in the grave
With me.
Stop it!
Each one must pull one.
Look, I, temporarily on the rim
Of the grave,
Have grasped my mother's hand
My father's leg.
There is the hand of Robeson
Langston's thigh
Zora's arm and hair
Your grandfather's lifted chin
And lynched woman's elbow
What you've tried to forget
Of your grandmother's frown.
Each one, pull one back into the sun
We who have stood over
So many graves
Know that no matter what they do
All of us must live
Or none.
|
Written by
Charles Kingsley |
“ARE you ready for your steeplechase, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree?
Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Baree.
You’re booked to ride your capping race to-day at Coulterlee,
You’re booked to ride Vindictive, for all the world to see,
To keep him straight, and keep him first, and win the run for me.
”
Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Baree.
She clasp’d her newborn baby, poor Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrèe,
Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Baree.
“I cannot ride Vindictive, as any man might see,
And I will not ride Vindictive, with this baby on my knee;
He ’s kill’d a boy, he ’s kill’d a man, and why must he kill me?”
“Unless you ride Vindictive, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree,
Unless you ride Vindictive to-day at Coulterlee,
And land him safe across the brook, and win the blank for me,
It ’s you may keep your baby, for you ’ll get no keep from me.
”
“That husbands could be cruel,” said Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrèe,
“That husbands could be cruel, I have known for seasons three;
But oh, to ride Vindictive while a baby cries for me,
And be kill’d across a fence at last for all the world to see!”
She master’d young Vindictive—O, the gallant lass was she!
And kept him straight and won the race as near as near could be;
But he kill’d her at the brook against a pollard willow tree;
Oh! he kill’d her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see,
And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine, Lorree.
|
Written by
G K Chesterton |
To J.
S.
M.
The wine they drink in Paradise
They make in Haute Lorraine;
God brought it burning from the sod
To be a sign and signal rod
That they that drink the blood of God
Shall never thirst again.
The wine they praise in Paradise
They make in Ponterey,
The purple wine of Paradise,
But we have better at the price;
It's wine they praise in Paradise,
It's cider that they pray.
The wine they want in Paradise
They find in Plodder's End,
The apple wine of Herford,
Of Hafod Hill and Herford,
Where woods went down to Herford,
And there I had a friend.
The soft feet of the blessed go
In the soft western vales,
The road of the silent saints accord,
The road from heaven to Herford,
Where the apple wood of Herford
Goes all the way to Wales.
|
Written by
James Tate |
The new ergonomics were delivered
just before lunchtime
so we ignored them.
Without revealing the particulars
let me just say that
lunch was most satisfying.
Jack and Roberta went with
the corned beef for a change.
Jack believes in alien abduction
and Roberta does not,
although she has had
several lost weekends lately
and one or two unexplained scars
on her buttocks.
I thought
I recognized someone
from my childhood
at a table across the room,
the same teeth, the same hair,
but when he stood-up,
I wasn't sure, Squid with a red tie?
Impossible.
I finished
my quiche lorraine
and returned my thoughts
to Jack's new jag:
"Well, I guess anything's
possible.
People disappear
all the time, and most of them
have no explanation
when and if they return.
Look at Tony's daughter
and she's never been the same.
"
Jack was looking as if
he'd bet on the right horse now.
"And these new ergonomics,
who really designed them?
Does anybody know?
Do they tell us anything?
A name, an address? Hell no.
"
Squid was paying his bill
in a standard-issue blue blazer.
He looked across the room at me
several times.
He looked tired,
like he wanted to sleep for a long time
in a barn somewhere, in Kansas.
I wanted to sleep there, too.
|
Written by
Edward Taylor |
The new ergonomics were delivered
just before lunchtime
so we ignored them.
Without revealing the particulars
let me just say that
lunch was most satisfying.
Jack and Roberta went with
the corned beef for a change.
Jack believes in alien abduction
and Roberta does not,
although she has had
several lost weekends lately
and one or two unexplained scars
on her buttocks.
I thought
I recognized someone
from my childhood
at a table across the room,
the same teeth, the same hair,
but when he stood-up,
I wasn't sure, Squid with a red tie?
Impossible.
I finished
my quiche lorraine
and returned my thoughts
to Jack's new jag:
"Well, I guess anything's
possible.
People disappear
all the time, and most of them
have no explanation
when and if they return.
Look at Tony's daughter
and she's never been the same.
"
Jack was looking as if
he'd bet on the right horse now.
"And these new ergonomics,
who really designed them?
Does anybody know?
Do they tell us anything?
A name, an address? Hell no.
"
Squid was paying his bill
in a standard-issue blue blazer.
He looked across the room at me
several times.
He looked tired,
like he wanted to sleep for a long time
in a barn somewhere, in Kansas.
I wanted to sleep there, too.
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
I
While I stood listening, discreetly dumb,
Lorraine was having the last word with me:
“I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see
Some creatures are born fortunate, and some
Are born to be found out and overcome,—
Born to be slaves, to let the rest go free;
And if I’m one of them (and I must be)
You may as well forget me and go home.
“You tell me not to say these things, I know,
But I should never try to be content:
I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow.
Some could have done it—some girls have the stuff;
But I can’t do it: I don’t know enough.
I’m going to the devil.
”—And she went.
II
I did not half believe her when she said
That I should never hear from her again;
Nor when I found a letter from Lorraine,
Was I surprised or grieved at what I read:
“Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead.
You are too far away to make me stop.
They say that one drop—think of it, one drop!—
Will be enough,—but I’ll take five instead.
“You do not frown because I call you friend,
For I would have you glad that I still keep
Your memory, and even at the end—
Impenitent, sick, shattered—cannot curse
The love that flings, for better or for worse,
This worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.
”
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
'Twas in a village in Lorraine
Whose name I quite forget,
I found I needfully was fain
To buy a serviette.
I sought a shop wherein they sell
Such articles as these,
And told a smiling mademoiselle;
'I want a towel, please.
'
'Of kinds,' said she, 'I've only two,'
And took the bundles down;
And one was coloured azure blue,
And one was khaki brown.
With doubt I scratched my hoary head;
The quality was right;
The size too, yet I gravely said:
'Too bad you haven't white.
'
That pretty maid had sunny hair,
Her gaze was free from guile,
And while I hesitated there
She watched me with a smile.
Then as I went to take the blue
She said 'Non' meaning no.
'Ze khaki ones are best, M'sieu:
Ze dirts zey do not show.
'
|