The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade

We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is

Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time

Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one

And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect

We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us

but what stands before us

We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another

We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

---Amanda Gorman

A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

--- Yehuda Amichai (Note: From "The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai", translations by ChanaBloch and Stephen Mitchell)

A Worker Reads History

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.

--- Bertolt Brecht

Bitter Cold

There is bitter cold 

At the borders of the city Of indifference. 

Wizened women and men 

And children below their teens 

Lie the frozen nights 

On bare tarmac, 

Surviving by the fire in their hearts, 

And the justice of their cause. 

A glow of truth from their being 

Warms the air and shames the 

Winter of crude impertinence, 

Even as their human bodies may 

Succumb to the December hell.

 Carrying the nursing warmth 

Of the soil in their bones, 

India’s farmers outface the urban 

Cold and show how the real freeze 

Lies in the swollen skull of authority 

Whose hollow cruelty may be stern 

Without human content, but whose 

Pride of office screams for pity. 

 This is truly a new beauty born 

That gathers histories 

Of courage and faith

 In the sounding of the people’s horn 

That may never be stilled 

Either by Nature’s extremes 

Or the flimsy robes worn By Pharaohs of the day. 

Yet again, the ploughshare shows the way. 

 ---Badri Raina

गीत है यह, गिला नही

 'आये भी वो गये भी वो' 'गीत है यह, गिला नहीं।'

हमने ये कब कहा भला, हमसे कोई मिला नहीं।

आपके एक ख़याल में मिलते रहे हम आपसे

ये भी है एक सिलसिला गो कोई सिलसिला नहीं।

गर्मे-सफर हैं आप, तो हम भी हैं भीड़ में कहीं।

अपना भी काफ़िला है कुछ आप ही का काफ़िला नहीं।

दर्द को पूछते थे वो, मेरी हँसी थमी नहीं,

दिल को टटोलते थे वो, मेरा जिगर हिला नहीं।

आयी बहार हुस्‍न का खाबे-गराँ लिये हुए,

मेरे चमन को क्‍या हुआ, जो कोई गुल खिला नहीं।

उसने किये बहत जतन, हार के कह उठी नज़र,

सीना-ए-चाक का रफू हमसे कभी सिला नहीं।

इश्‍क़ का शायर है ख़ाक, हुस्‍न का जिक्र है मज़ाक़

दर्द में गर चमक नहीं, रूह में गर जिला नहीं।

कौन उठाये उसके नाज, दिल तो उसी के पास है;

'शम्‍स' मजे में हैं कि हम इश्‍क में मुब्तिला नहीं।

---  शमशेर बहादुर सिंह

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---John McCrae

In Praise of Coldness

"If you wish to move your reader,"
Chekhov said, "you must write more coldly."

Herakleitos recommended, "A dry soul is best."

And so at the center of many great works
is found a preserving dispassion,
like the vanishing point of quattrocentro perspective,
or tiny packets of desiccant enclosed
in a box of new shoes or seeds.

But still the vanishing point
is not the painting,
the silica is not the blossoming plant.

Chekhov, dying, read the timetables of trains.
To what more earthly thing could he have been faithful?—
Scent of rocking distances,
smoke of blue trees out the window,
hampers of bread, pickled cabbage, boiled meat.

Scent of a knowable journey.

Neither a person entirely broken
nor one entirely whole can speak.

In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

--- Jane Hirschfield