La Guitarra

Federico Garcia Lorca


Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil
callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
llora monotona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin manana,
y el primer pajaro muerto
sobre la rama.
Oh, guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.


The Guitar

Federico Garcia Lorca

The guitar's crying
begins.
The strokes break the cups
of dawn.
The guitar's crying
begins.
It is useless
to stifle it.
It is impossible
to stifle it.
It cries in one tone
the way water cries,
the way wind cries
over fresh snow.
It is impossible
to stifle it.
It cries for things
distant.
Sand of the fiery South
that begs for white camelias.
It cries the arrow with no aim,
the afternoon with no tomorrow,
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
O guitar!
Heart deeply wounded
by five knives.

(translation mine)

Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden


Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

The English Are So Nice!

D. H. Lawrence


The English are so nice
So awfully nice
They are the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're very nice about being nice
About your being nice as well!
If you're not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
They're all very well
But they're not really nice, you know.
They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why we don't have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
Of course, naturally.
But it doesn't really matter what you say to them,
They don't really understand
You can just say anything to them:
Be nice, you know, just nice
But you must never take them seriously, they wouldn't understand,
Just be nice, you know! oh, fairly nice,
Not too nice of course, they take advantage
But nice enough, just nice enough
To let them feel they're not quite as nice as they might be.

Baby Running Barefoot

D. H. Lawrence


When the white feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in a wind,
They poise and run like puffs of wind that pass
Over water where the weeds are thinned.

And the sight of thier white playing in the grass
Is winsome as a robin's song, so fluttering;
Or like two butterflies that settle on a glass
Cup for a moment, soft little wing-beats uttering.

And I wish that the baby would tack across here to me
Like a wind-shadow running on a pond, so she could stand
With two little bare white feet upon my knee
And I could feel her feet in either hand

Cool as syringa buds in morning hours,
Or firm and silken as young peony flowers.

Andraitx--Pomegranate Flowers

D. H. Lawrence


It is June, it is June
The pomegranates are in flower,
The peasants are bending cutting the bearded wheat.

The pomegranates are in flower
Beside the high road, past the deathly dust,
And even the sea is silent in the sun.

Short gasps of flame in the green of night, way off
The pomegranates are in flower,
Small sharp red fires in the night of leaves.

And noon is suddenly dark, is lustrous, is silent and dark
Men are unseen, beneath the shading hats;
Only, from out the foliage of the secret loins
Red flamelets here and there reveal
A man, a woman there.

Self-Protection

D. H. Lawrence


When science starts to be interpretive
It is more unscientific even than mysticism.

To make self-preservation and self-protection the first law of existence
Is about as unscientific as making suicide the first law of existence,
And amounts to very much the same thing.

A nightingale singing at the top of his voice
Is neither hiding himself nor preserving himself nor propagating his species;
He is giving himself away in every sense of the word;
And obviously, it is the culminating point of his existence.

A tiger is striped and golden for his own glory.
He would certainly be much more invisible if he were gray-green.

And I don't suppose the ichthyosaurus sparkled like the humming-bird,
No doubt he was khaki-colored with muddy protective coloration,
So why didn't he survive?

As a matter of fact, the only creatures that seem to survive
Are those that give themselves away in flash and sparkle
And gay flicker of joyful life;
Those that go glittering abroad
With a bit of splendor.

Even mice play quite beautifully at shadows,
And some of them are brilliantly piebald.

I expect the dodo looked like a clod,
A drab and dingy bird.

Touch-poem for a group of people

Yoko Ono


Touch each other.

Alone

Edgar Allen Poe


From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were--I have not seen
As others saw--I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone.
Then--in my childhood--in the dawn
Of a most stormy life--was drawn
From eve'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold--
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by--
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

To ____

Edgar Allen Poe


I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath little of earth in it--
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute--
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I--
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer by.

Sonnet 131

William Shakespeare


Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold,
Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;
To say they err I dare not be so bold,
Although I swear it to myself alone.
And, to be sure that is not false I swear,
A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,
One on another's neck do witness bear
Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place.
In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.

Sonnet 43

William Shakespeare


When do I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected,
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made,
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stray!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And dreams bright days when dreams do show thee me.

Sonnet 34

William Shakespeare


Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'er take me in my way,
Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace.
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.
Th'offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offense's cross.
Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheeds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.