Pilgrim Soul - Facing and Surviving

Print these poems | Back to categories

Counting the after-math

by Marge Piercy

People penned to die in our instant
concentration camps, just add water,
bodies pushed to the side.

Thirst hurts worse than hunger.
It swells your brain against your skull.
it sandpapers your gut from within.

But hunger too makes people crazy.
Shoot the looters who are grabbing
from flooded stores survival for hours more.

Baby is crying
Grandma is dying
and that dirty water is getting higher

Talk to the camera about why didn’t these
crazy people evacuate? Without cars,
without money, without credit cards –

Why didn’t they fly away like gulls?
Why didn’t they get on their yacht
and chug upstream? But even at the Ritz

when they ran out of food and water
the manager told tourists to “find”
food in the deserted stores.

Baby is crying
Grandma is dying
and that dirty water is getting higher

All the cats climbing the rafters
their fur sodden with stinking refuse
laden water and drowning.

All the dogs chained to porches
as the water rose, swimming in
narrowing circles. FEMA says

we didn’t know about the thousands
in the convention center, as millions
saw them on TV screaming for help.

Baby is crying softer now
Grandma is up to her chin
and that dirty water is still getting higher

Who will count the bloated bodies?
Who will weep for children silenced?
For mothers drifting like belly-up goldfish?

Who will mourn that African-American town
corrupted by the rich, enriched by the poor
with spicy music and mama’s sexy cooking?

Baby has stopped crying
Grandma has drowned
and that dirty water is still getting higher

Lullaby
Georgia Heard

Will you hold me in your lap?
Will you cuddle me so tight?
Will you kiss my fearful brow,
And not turn off the light?

Will you soothe away my worry?
Will you sing the sweetest song?
Will you chase my fears away,
And rock me all night long?




Trouble, Fly
Susan Marie Swanson

Trouble, fly
out of our house.
We left the window open for you.

Fly like smoke from a chimney.
Fly like the whistle from a train.
Fly far, far
away from my family,
mumbling in their sleep.

Trouble, fly
Let our night
be a night of peace.

September List
by Ellen Rust

Leaves to rake, grass to cut, weeds to pull,
New Orleans, Biloxi, Waveland,
Books to read, plans to write, groups to lead,
St. Bernard Parish, Slidell, Gulfport,
House to clean, clothes to wash, dog to groom,
Hattiesburg, Pascagoula, Metairie,
Arrange stuff: food, possessions, family pictures,
Chalmette, Kenner, Ocean Springs,
Volunteer time, donate food, give money,
Pass Christian, Long Beach, Bay St. Louis,
Homeless, displaced, misplaced,
Life goes on, life goes on,
Houston, Memphis, Baton Rouge,
Shelter, food, clothes, care,
Nashville, Selma, Tillman’s Corner,
Shelter, food, clothes, care,
Not enough, not enough,
Calling back, calling back,
New Orleans, Biloxi, Waveland,
St. Bernard Parish, Slidell, Gulfport,
Hattiesburg, Pascagoula, Metairie,
Chalmette, Kenner, Ocean Springs,
Pass Christian, Long Beach, Bay St. Louis,
Calling back, calling back,
The lost, the abandoned, the bereft,
New Orleans, Biloxi, Waveland.
 

Hurricane Hits England
Grace Nichols

It took a hurricane, to bring her closer
To the landscape.
Half the night she lay awake,
The howling ship of the wind,
Its gathering rage,
Like some dark ancestral spectre.
Talk to me Huracan
Talk to me Oya
Talk to me Shango
And Hattie,
My sweeping, back-home cousin.
Tell me why you visit
An English coast?
What is the meaning
Of old tongues
Reaping havoc
In new places?

The blinding illumination,
Even as you short-
Circuit us
Into further darkness?
What is the meaning of trees
Falling heavy as whales
Their crusted roots
Their cratered graves?
O why is my heart unchained?
Tropical Oya of the Weather,
I am aligning myself to you,
I am following the movement of your winds,
I am riding the mystery of your storm.
Ah, sweet mystery,
Come to break the frozen lake in me,
Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,
Come to let me know
That the earth is the earth is the earth.

http://learningat.ke7.org.uk/english/ks4/year11/Othercultures.htm#Hurricane%20hits%20England



Storm Windows

People are putting up storm windows now,
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something that I should have liked to say to you,
Something . . .the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water . . . something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
Unspeakable the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.

— Howard Nemerov

Summer and Rain: Tanka

Summer and rain
rain and summer
no one can escape from
this cycle of seasons
...but why should we?

Roh Mih


The Storm
by James K. McAlister

Wind rustled crunching leaves
That on the sidewalk lay.
There was a big storm coming
On a windy Autumn day.

Thunder rumbled overhead
And shook me through and through.
A jagged bolt of lightning struck!
The sky then cracked in two!

Rain washed down the dirty road.
It hissed, and gushed, and muttered.
The downpour swept dead leaves away
Into the bubbling gutter.

The little airplanes of the heart
with their brave little propellers
What can they do
against the winds of darkness
even as butterflies are beaten back
by hurricanes
yet do not die
They lie in wait wherever
they can hide and hang
their fine wings folded
and when the killer-wind dies
they flutter forth again
into the new-blown light
live as leaves

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
First published as Sandinista Avioncitos


She has new leaves
After her dead flowers,
Like the little almond-tree
Which the frost hurt.

Richard Aldington

from Modern Poetry in Miniature, The Imagist Poem,
Ed. William Pratt, NY: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1963

The Last Freedom

We who lived in concentration camps can remember
the men who walked through the huts comforting
others, giving away their last piece of bread.
They may have been few in number, but they offer
sufficient proof that everything can be taken from
a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms
-- to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one's own way.

~ Viktor Frankl ~ (Man's Search for Meaning)


A GREAT NEED

Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.

(“The Gift” – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)


Taking Leave of a Friend
Ezra Pound

Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding about them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.

Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each others
as we are departing.


Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~


KINDNESS
Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

They are all children when they sleep.
There is no war in them.
They open their hands and breathe
in the slow rhythm given to humans by heaven.

Whether soldiers, statesmen, servants, or masters
they purse their lips like small children
and they all half-open their hands.
Stars stand watch then and the arch of the sky is hazed over
for a few hours when no one will harm another.

If only we could talk with each other then,
when hearts are like half-open flowers.
Words would push their way in
like golden bees.

God, teach me sleep's language.

-Rolf Jacobson

(Prayers for a thousand Years. Ed. by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon,
1999, Harper SanFrancisco)


STRENGTHEN THE THINGS THAT REMAIN
Nancy Wood

Rainbows still live in the sky and green grass
is growing everywhere. Clouds have familiar shapes
and sunsets have not changed color in a long time. Thunder
still follows lightening and spring comes after winter's
misery.

A tree is still a tree and a rock is still a rock. A warbler
sings its familiar song and coyotes howl
in disconcerting harmony. Grasshoppers still hop

to their own music,
bees still buzz with excitement, and squirrels
still jump like acrobats. Mountains still contain mystery
and oceans surge with eternity. Bears still sleep in winter

and eagles fly higher than other birds. Snakes have an affinity
for the ground, while fish
are content in water. Patterns persist,
life goes on, whatever rises will converge.

Do what you can, but strengthen the things that remain.

2002,"This Place I Know :Poems of Comfort." Ed. by Georgia Heard.
Candlewick Press, Cambridge, MA.02140.)

Unison Benediction
May Sarton

Return to the most human,
nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.

Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish…
at last, act for love.

(Collected Poems 1930-1993)


Days
Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

my adaptation-DAJ
[Today begins hot and hazy,
the air heavy with moisture
and the thick mucous of August,
the sun diffused by a thin blanket of clouds.]

Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow

on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday,

you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday's saucer
without the slightest clink.

Collins, Billy. "Days." Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York: Random House, 2001, p 57.


Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
--William Ernest Henley. 1849–1903


Still I Rise
Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Louisiana 1927
Randy Newman (song)

What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away


Try To Praise The Mutilated World
—Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Translated by Clare Cavanaugh