September

Then the flowers became very wild

because it was early September

and they had nothing to lose

they tossed their colors every

which way over the garden wall

splattering the lawn shoving their

wild orange red rain-disheveled faces

into my window without shame

--- Grace Paley, from Begin Again: Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001)

No Explosions

To enjoy

fireworks,

you would have

to have lived

a different kind

of life.

--- Naomi Shihab Nye

Canadians

Here are
our signatures:
geese, fish, eskimo
faces, girl-guide
cookies, ink-drawings
tree-plantings, summer
storms and winter
emanations.

We look
like a geography but
just scratch us
and we bleed
history, are full
of modest misery
are sensitive
to double-talk double-take
(and double-cross)
in a country
too wide
to be single in.

Are we real or
did someone invent
us, was it Henry
Hudson Etienne Brûlé
or a carnival
of village girls?
Was it
a flock of nuns
a pity of indians
a gravyboat of
fur-traders, professional
explorers or those
amateurs map-makers
our Fathers
of Confederation?

Wherever you are
Charles Tupper Alexander
Galt D'arcy McGee George
Cartier Ambrose Shea
Henry Crout Father
Ragueneau Lork Selkirk
and John A: however
far into northness you have walked--
when we call you
turn around and
don't look so surprised.

--- Miriam Waddington, (Winnipeg, Canada)

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

--- Linda Pastan

“Everything is the colonizer's Fault”

We already have poets
who speak truth to power,
in various reputed literary magazines.
We already have our political heirs
who know how to stay relevant in the media.
We already have journalists
who are friends with people in high places,
in case they write something against them in the future.
We already have newspaper editors
who know how to beat politicians at golf.
We already have people in uniform
who know how to change their nationality
as they return home.
We already have government employees
who are oblivious to politics
in the first week of every month.

What we need, God
—if you are still up there?—is
some typical, rich,
handsome, high caste Kashmiri dictator
who empathizes with our material zest!
Someone who understands
our helpless need to be religious and
speaks Arabic like poetry.

--- Mubashir Karim

Irani Restaurant Instructions

Please

Do not spit

Do not sit more

Pay promptly, time is valuable

Do not write letter

without order refreshment

Do not comb,

hair is spoiling floor

Do not make mischiefs in cabin

our waiter is reporting

Come again

All are welcome whatever caste

If not satisfied tell us

otherwise tell others

GOD IS GREAT

--- Nissim Ezekiel

'Civil Service Romance'

The Letter 

Subject: Improvement of Bilateral Ties

Dear Miss:
With due respect and humble submission
I beg to welcome you to neighboring section.
I am coming the other day.
early for change
in view of new Boss
and you are also coming up the same stairway.
Power is failing as per schedule
and the lift will not move.
Not even down.
Five floors is no joke for fair sex
but still you are climbing and smiling.
I am sweating but you are glowing.
and becoming very beautiful.
Hitherto also you are pretty
needless to say. This is the face
I am saying to myself
to expedite launching of vessels.
Fair Helen, I am mentally drafting
make me immortal crew member.
You are joining as lower division assistant.
but you are Upper Division lady to me.
I was lower division initially
and rose by dint of good performance
I will teach sweet lady to follow suit
I am thinking at once: how to do
the buttering of boss. 

- Kaiser Hamidul Haq

The Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

---Alfred Lord Tennyson

HOHENLINDEN

On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

But Linden saw another sight
When the drum beat, at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.

By torch and trumpet fast arrayed
Each horseman drew his battle blade,
And furious every charger neighed,
To join the dreadful revelry.

Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steed to battle driven,
And louder than the bolts of heaven

Far flashed the red artillery.
And redder yet those fires shall glow
On Linden's hills of blood-stained snow,
And darker yet shall be the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

'Tis morn, but scarce yon lurid sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
Shout in their sulphurous canopy.

The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave!
And charge with all thy chivalry!

Ah! few shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.

--- Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

--- Robert Frost

Tapestry

It hangs from heaven to earth.
There are trees in it, cities, rivers,
small pigs and moons. In one corner
the snow falling over a charging cavalry,
in another women are planting rice.

You can also see:
a chicken carried off by a fox,
a naked couple on their wedding night,
a column of smoke,
an evil-eyed woman spitting into a pail of milk.

What is behind it?
—Space, plenty of empty space.

And who is talking now?
—A man asleep under his hat.

What happens when he wakes up?
—He’ll go into a barbershop.

They’ll shave his beard, nose, ears, and hair,
To make him look like everyone else.

--- Charles Simic

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

---Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay

Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

--- Shel Silverstein

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

---William Stafford

Dust

It’s my turn at the water point:
The trickle is slower today
Each day, slower,
One day, it may stop;
And my field has withered,
Rusted-dry in the staring sun,
The crevices filling with dust.
Tin buckets clash behind me
And a loud voice roughly bawls
“Don’t fill that bucket full!
Fool – don’t you know you’ll slop?”
I withdraw, abashed. It’s true:
I mustn’t spill a precious drop
Not even as a libation
To the gloating sun.

I saw a young man gunned down
As I shopped in the market place.
Two thick thuds, and then he fell,
And thrashed a bit, on his face.
That’s all. He sprawled in the staring sun.
(They whirled away in a cloud of dust
In a smart white van.)
His blood laid the dust
In a scarlet little shower,
Scarlet little flowers.
In the staring sun, the little flowers
Will burn and turn to rust.

I stumble home through arid fields
My furtive footsteps hushed by dust.
I scan the sky – hard, limpid, deep –
O pure and high is heaven’s sky!
Is there no shade for me? I weep
To hide from the glaring eye of heaven.
(Cain, my brother Cain!
I know your fear, your guilt, your pain –
I too have now a brother slain,
I too am sealed with the scarlet stain!)
My ink has crusted in my pen
And in my heart – the dust.

---Nini Lungalang

To the Young Who Want to Die

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.

The gun will wait. The lake will wait.

The tall gall in the small seductive vial

will wait will wait:

will wait a week: will wait through April.

You do not have to die this certain day.

Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.

I assure you death will wait. Death has

a lot of time. Death can

attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is

just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;

can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.

Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.

Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.

Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.

--- Gwendolyn Brooks

American Names

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy's horn,
But I will remember where I was born.

I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain.

I will fall in love with a Salem tree
And a rawhide quirt from Santa Cruz,
I will get me a bottle of Boston sea
And a blue-gum nigger to sing me blues.
I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard,
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman's Oast,
It is a magic ghost you guard
But I am sick for a newer ghost,
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.

Henry and John were never so
And Henry and John were always right?
Granted, but when it was time to go
And the tea and the laurels had stood all night,
Did they never watch for Nantucket Light?

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

---Stephen Vincent Bene

Poems on The Dreyfus Affair

1. "Dreyfus"

France has no dungeon in her island tomb
So deep that she may hide injustice there;
The cry of innocence, despite her care,—
Despite her roll of drums, her cannon's boom,
Is heard wherever human hearts have room
For sympathy: a sob upon the air,
Echoed and re-echoed everywhere,
It swells and swells, a prophecy of doom.
Thou latest victim of an ancient hate!
In agony so awfully alone,
The world forgets thee not, nor can forget.
Such martyrdom she feels to be her own,
And sees involved in thine her larger fate;
She questions, and thy foes shall answer yet.


2. Dreyfus

If thou art living, in that Devil's Isle
Inquisitorial and darkly vile,
Where human hearts are pitilessly broken;
Where treacherous hate seems stronger
Than either right or law; where grief hath spoken
Its final word and asks but to forget:
If thou art living, wretched one! live yet
A little longer!
Outcast, forsaken, thou art not alone,
One bides with thee Who shall thy woes atone,
And France, entangled in her toils of hate,
Hearkens a voice of warning.
Martyr and hope of an imperiled State,
Live yet a little! In the East is light—
A pledge to thee that long tho seem the night,
There comes the morning!

3. Picquart

"For love of justice and for love of truth!"
Aye, 't was for these, for these, he put aside
Place and preferment, fortune and the pride
Of fair renown; the friends he prized, in sooth,
All the rewards of an illustrious youth,
And set his strength against a swollen tide,
And gave his spirit to be crucified,—
For love of justice and for love of truth!
Keeper of the abiding scroll of fame,
Lo! we intrust to thee a hero's name!
Life, like a restless river, hurrying by,
Bears us so swiftly on, we may forget
The name to which we owe so deep a debt,—
But guard it, thou! nor suffer it to die!

4. Le Grand Salut

There is a power in innocence, a might
Which, clothed in weakness, makes injustice vain:
A strength, o'ertopping reason to explain,
Which bears it—though deep-buried out of sight—
Slowly and surely upward to the light:
A conscious certainty amidst its pain
That, robbed of all things, it shall all regain,
Through that eternal law which guards the right.
O Dreyfus! Thy dear country has restored
More than thine honour in her hour supreme.
Noble, still noble, though she so could err,
God spared thee to her that she might redeem
Herself, and hand thee back thy blameless sword.
Listen! the world salutes—not only thee, but her!

---Florence Van Leer Earle Nicholson Coates

हम होंगे कामयाब

होंगे कामयाब, होंगे कामयाब
हम होंगे कामयाब एक दिन
हो, हो,
मन में है विश्वास
पूरा है विश्वास
हम होंगे कामयाब एक दिन

होगी शान्ति चारों ओर
होगी शान्ति चारों ओर
होगी शान्ति चारों ओर एक दिन
हो, हो,
मन में है विश्वास
पूरा है विश्वास
होगी शान्ति चारों ओर एक दिन

हम चलेंगे साथ साथ
डाले हाथों में हाथ
हम चलेंगे साथ साथ एक दिन
हो, हो,
मन में है विश्वास
पूरा है विश्वास
हम चलेंगे साथ साथ एक दिन

नहीं डर किसी का आज
नहीं भय किसी का आज
नहीं डर किसी का आज के दिन
हो, हो,
मन में है विश्वास
पूरा है विश्वास
नहीं डर किसी का आज के दिन

 --- Charles Albert Tindley (We Shall Overcome का गिरिजा कुमार माथुर द्वारा किया गया हिंदी भावानुवाद)

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?


Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

---Langston Hughes