A poem a day keeps the doctor away...

 

HER KIND

 

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

 

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

​

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
– Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

 

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THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

 

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the 
       flow of human blood in human veins. 

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

       went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

       bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

​

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

​

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
– Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

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A WORD IS DEAD

 

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just begins
to live that day.
– Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

 

 

OZYMANDIAS

I met a Traveler from an antique land, 
Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: 
And on the pedestal these words appear: 
"My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings." 
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair! 
No thing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, 
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

– Percy Bysshe Shelley