I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
...
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
...
I come from a musical place
Where they shoot me for my song
And my brother has been tortured
By my brother in my land.
...
The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.
...
"SISTER, sister, go to bed!
Go and rest your weary head."
Thus the prudent brother said.
...
Part One
The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry.
...
Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!
...
Long ago the Gladiators,
When the call to combat came,
Marching past the massed spectators,
Hailed the Emp'ror with acclaim!
...
'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she'd read.
'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
...
--------A Simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
...
When they torture your mother
plant a tree
When they torture your father
plant a tree
...
Your hidden jellylike fleshes irritate
My little warm brother
Embracing your inner organisms
Authenticating the friendliness
...
Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
...
Through many countries and over many seas
I have come, Brother, to these melancholy rites,
to show this final honour to the dead,
and speak (to what purpose?) to your silent ashes,
since now fate takes you, even you, from me.
...
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you're
old enough to read this you know what
...
"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
...
Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."
...
I
But our Great Turks in wit must reign alone
And ill can bear a Brother on the Throne.
...
Listen here. I've never played it safe
in spite of what the critics say.
...
In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper:
...
You are there,
In the tenderness of new born,
the stillness of the pond,
the whispers of new morn,
...
I slumbered with your poems on my breast
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
To see, if in a dream they brought of you,
...
Come, brother, come. Lets lift it;
come now, hewit! roll away!
Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day
But lets not wait for it.
...
YOU can keep your antique silver and your statuettes of bronze,
Your curios and tapestries so fine,
But of all your treasures rare there is nothing to compare
With this patched up, wornout football pal o’ mine.
...
Guns,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships
In the name of the war god.
...
AMONG the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
...
I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
...
There’s a mirror likeness between those two
shining, youthfully-fledged figures, though
one seems paler than the other and more austere,
I might even say more perfect, more distinguished,
...
I am the Voice of the Voiceless
Through me the dumb shall speak
Till the world's deaf ear be made to hear
The wrongs of the wordless weak.
...
' die, I die!' the Mother said,
'My children die for lack of bread.
What more has the merciless Tyrant said?'
The Monk sat down on the stony bed.
...
A Nightingale that all day long
Had cheered the village with his song,
Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
...
One fine night, in the middle of the day,
two atheists knelt down to pray.
Hymn books opened upside-down,
in Top Hat n Tails, and their dressing gown.
...
Who was the villain
When it all began
Some fair-haired stranger
From a faraway land
...
Here is the incidence, very true of its kind and, has taken place in my life. In one place mother wept for me and in the second place I wept.Both has no bearing on each other but since it was between mother and son, I thought of it putting it to a general public for view.
...
NOT that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,--
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
...
It was an English ladye bright,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,)
And she would marry a Scottish knight,
For Love will still be lord of all.
...
There sat two glasses, filled to the brim,
On a rich man's table, rim to rim.
One was ruddy and red as blood,
And one was clear as the crystal flood.
...
No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Nothing in them in not particular,
...
. When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
...
To these I turn, in these I trust;
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal;
I guard her beauty clean from rust.
...
Be not proud.
In a downtown alley way
he stands but just barely and to see his
pale gaunt ashen frame is to ask-
...
The hunchèd camels of the night
Trouble the bright
And silver waters of the moon.
The Maiden of the Morn will soon
...
None lives for ever, brother, and
nothing lasts for long. Keep that in
mind and rejoice.
Our life is not the one old burden,
...
Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!
Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!
He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!
...
Crawled under the house to retrieve
something's that I had fogotten.
While I took them out, I sorted and found
that most of what I'd stored, was damp and rotten.
...
Abiding by the rules of health strictly,
He died at the age of 52.
His brother Kesmat Ali smoking punctually
...
WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney.
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.
...
"Loss of mother is death of the child"
No compensation can make up the loss
All privileges of childhood are denied to him
...
While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part --
...
And I grew up in patterned tranquillity,
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me,
But the voice of the wind I could understand.
...
Now that you arrived in the afterlife,
What was your earned income?
Hope you did not see the ugliness
...
Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking
through the bare rooms over my head,
opening and closing doors.
What could he be looking for in an empty house?
...
Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not.
Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own.
Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.
...
You broke my heart
So many times
Was he sweeter?
Is he better?
...
For everything a reason
and a season under the sun;
every puzzle has its answer
that is not uniquely our own.
...
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
...
Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
...
You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
like a scorpion.
You're like a sparrow, my brother,
...
This 'appened in a battle to a batt'ry of the corps
Which is first among the women an' amazin' first in war;
An' what the bloomin' battle was I don't remember now,
But Two's off-lead 'e answered to the name o' ~Snarleyow~.
...
You are my mother
More supportive than a brother
You are my mother
More compassionate than a sister
...
Brother, I've seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
...
Grant me the moment, the lovely moment
That I may lean forth to see
The other buds, the other blooms,
The other leaves on the tree:
...
I can’t go to school because I am sick
If I walk out my house I’ll get hit by a brick
I can’t go to school because I’m afraid
...
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
...
I found him in the guard-room at the Base.
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
...
The Poet took his walking-stick
Of fine and polished ebony.
Set in the close-grained wood
Were quaint devices;
...
On the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out-spread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
...
In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
...
My mother’s brother’s sister’s name is Grace
She’s my aunt and likes to go from place to place
My mother’s sister’s brother’s name is Brad
He’s my uncle and he is my cousin’s Dad
...
Overcome - O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl -
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
...
Brother, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother—
Not for years, anyhow;
...
'Chevalita,
Pretty cretr,
I do love her
Like a brother;
...
By ways remote and distant waters sped,
Brother, to thy sad grave-side am I come,
That I may give the last gifts to the dead,
And vainly parley with thine ashes dumb:
...
When I scurry about on a rainy day
Acting annoyed at the rain
I sometimes remember a time far away
When I viewed raindrops with no disdain
...
You are my brother,
Even though we're
Miles apart.
...
There is total silence
No offense, no defense
Everything stops
There are no mops
...
When the sun
Shines through the leaves of the apple-tree,
When the sun
Makes shadows of the leaves of the apple-tree,
...
My Brother is so annoying
My Brother is so sad
My Brother drives me crazy
it makes me wanna go mad.
...
To the music of Beethoven's ninth symphony
Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
...
Birth and death, twin-sister and twin-brother,
Night and day, on all things that draw breath,
Reign, while time keeps friends with one another
Birth and death.
...
Imagine, mother, that you are to stay at home and I am to travel
into strange lands.
...
"Why did you melt your waxen man
Sister Helen?
To-day is the third since you began."
"The time was long, yet the time ran,
...
Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God
and loved one another.
...
Here, as in childhood, Brother, no one knows us.
And someone has died, and someone is not yet
born, while our father walks through his church at night
...
Driven across many nations, across many oceans,
I am here, my brother, for this final parting,
to offer at last those gifts which the dead are given
and to speak in vain to your unspeaking ashes,
...
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
...
A Brother and Sister
O I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves
...
Then the bright lamp is carried in,
The sunless hours again begin;
O'er all without, in field and lane,
The haunted night returns again.
...
When high noon on a summer’s day
makes the sky a fiery furnace
and the heart seeks a quiet corner for dreams,
then come to me, my weary friend.
...
What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?
I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV.
...
Give me your hand, my brother, search my face;
Look in these eyes lest I should think of shame;
For we have made an end of all things base.
We are returning by the road we came.
...
The mouth of this man is a gaunt strong mouth.
The head of this man is a gaunt strong head.
...
As it was in the beginning, so we’ll find it in the end,
For a lover, or a brother, or a sweetheart, or a friend;
As it was in the beginning, so we’ll find it by-and-bye,
...
My brother Jim's a millionaire,
while I have scarce a penny;
His face is creased with lines of care,
While my mug hasn't any.
...
You are belted with gold, little brother of mine,
Yellow gold, like the sun
That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine
When feasting is done.
...
It had been four days of no weather
as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors.
They'd closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings
...
Mary Wryte and her mother
Her father ande brother--
Was Alle of them drowned,
Inn Bvckstones povnde.
...