Life and Death: Christina Rossetti
Life is not sweet. One day it will be sweet
To shut our eyes and die:
Nor feel the wild flowers blow, nor birds dart by
With flitting butterfly,
Nor grass grow long above our heads and feet,
Nor hear the happy lark that soars sky high,
Nor sigh that spring is fleet and summer fleet,
Nor mark the waxing wheat,
Nor know who sits in our accustomed seat.
Life is not good. One day it will be good
To die, then live again;
To sleep meanwhile: so not to feel the wane
Of shrunk leaves dropping in the wood,
Nor hear the foamy lashing of the main,
Nor mark the blackened bean-fields, nor where stood
Rich ranks of golden grain
Only dead refuse stubble clothe the plain:
Asleep from risk, asleep from pain.
We Have the Right to Love Autumn: Mahmoud Darwish
translated, from the Arabic, by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché
And we, too, have the right to love the last days of authumn and ask the grove:
Is there room now for a new autumn so we may lie down like coals?
Like gold, autumn brings its leaves to half-staff.
If only we never said goodbye to the fundamentals
and questioned our fathers when they fled at knife-point.
May poetry and God’s name have mercy on us!
We have the right to warm the nights of beautiful women, and talk about
what might shorted the night of two strangers waiting for North on the compass.
It’s autumn. We have the right to smell autumn’s fragrances
and ask the night for a dream.
Does the dream, like the dreamers themselves, sicken? Autumn. Autumn.
Can a people be born on a guillotine?
We have the right to die any way we wish.
May the earth hide itself away in a blade of wheat!
Apostroph: Walt Whitman
O mater! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent,
proud!
O race of the future! O women!
O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!
O native power only! O beauty!
O yourself! O God! O divine average!
O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slum-
berers!
O arouse! the dawn-bird’s throat sounds shrill! Do
you not hear the cock crowing?
O, as I walk’d the beach, I heard the mournful notes
foreboding a tempest—the low, oft-repeated
shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon;
O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;—O you
sailors! O ships! make quick preparation!
O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the
eagle!
(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your
spoils;)
O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world
should prove indeed a sham, a sell!)
O I believe there is nothing real but America and
freedom!
O to sternly reject all except Democracy!
O imperator! O who dare confront you and me?
O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which
builds for mankind!
O feuillage! O North! O the slope drained by the
Mexican sea!
O all, all inseparable—ages, ages, ages!
O a curse on him that would dissever this Union for
any reason whatever!
O climates, labors! O good and evil! O death!
O you strong with iron and wood! O Personality!
O the village or place which has the greatest man or
woman! even if it be only a few ragged huts;
O the city where women walk in public processions in
the streets, the same as the men;
O a wan and terrible emblem, by me adopted!
O shapes arising! shapes of the future centuries!
O muscle and pluck forever for me!
O workmen and workwomen forever for me!
O farmers and sailors! O drivers of horses forever
for me!
O I will make the new bardic list of trades and tools!
O you coarse and wilful! I love you!
O South! O longings for my dear home! O soft and
sunny airs!
O pensive! O I must return where the palm grows
and the mocking-bird sings, or else I die!
O equality! O organic compacts! I am come to be
your born poet!
O whirl, contest, sounding and resounding! I am
your poet, because I am part of you;
O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents!
O vast preparations for These States! O years!
O what is now being sent forward thousands of years
to come!
O mediums! O to teach! to convey the invisible faith!
To promulge real things! to journey through all The
States!
O creation! O to-day! O laws! O unmitigated
adoration!
O for mightier broods of orators, artists, and singers!
O for native songs! carpenter’s, boatman’s, plough-
man’s songs! shoemaker’s songs!
O haughtiest growth of time! O free and extatic!
O what I, here, preparing, warble for!
O you hastening light! O the sun of the world will
ascend, dazzling, and take his height—and you
too will ascend;
O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent,
darting and burning;
O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light!
with pouring glories!
O copious! O hitherto unequalled!
O Libertad! O compact! O union impossible to
dissever!
O my Soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless!
O centuries, centuries yet ahead!
O voices of greater orators! I pause—I listen for
you!
O you States! Cities! defiant of all outside authority!
I spring at once into your arms! you I most
love!
O you grand Presidentiads! I wait for you!
New history! New heroes! I project you!
Visions of poets! only you really last! O sweep on!
sweep on!
O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet!
O heights! O infinitely too swift and dizzy yet!
O purged lumine! you threaten me more than I can
stand!
O present! I return while yet I may to you!
O poets to come, I depend upon you!
