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daily life, joy

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Acacias
Strolling many years ago

Down a street taken over by acacias in bloom

I found out from a friend who knows everything

That you had just gotten married.

I told him that I really

Had nothing to do with it.

I never loved you

- You know that better than I do -

Yet each time the acacias bloom

- Can you believe it? -

I get the very same feeling I had

When they hit me point-blank

With the heartbreaking news

That you had married someone else.
- translated by David Unger

I Take Back Everything I've Said
Before I go

I'm supposed to get a last wish:

Generous reader

burn this book

It's not at all what I wanted to say

Though it was written in blood

It's not what I wanted to say.

No lot could be sadder than mine

I was defeated by my own shadow:

My words took vengeance on me.

Forgive me, reader, good reader

If I cannot leave you

With a warm embrace, I leave you

With a forced and sad smile.

Maybe that's all I am

But listen to my last word:

I take back everything I've said.

With the greatest bitterness in the world

I take back everything I've said.
- translated by Miller Williams

Nicanor Parra, who was a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Chile in Santiago, is one of Latin America's most notable and innovative poets. Describing himself as an "antipoet," he writes in a wry, colloquial, and accessible mode that eschews the rhetorical inflation and florid gestures associated in the popular mind with verse. His sister Violeta was one of Chile's most renowned folk singers. Born in 1914, Parra is now in his mid-90s. These poems are from Antipoems: New and Selected, edited by David Unger and published by New Directions. "Acacias" copyright © 1973 by David Unger, and "I Take Back Everything I've Said" copyright © 1972 by Nicanor Parra and Miller Williams. The poems are reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

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Acacias Strolling many years ago Down a street taken over by acacias in bloom I found out from a friend who knows everything That you had just gotten married. I told him that I really Had nothing to do with it.

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"We do not dig graves or put caskets into graves any longer. The deci sion was made and funeral homes were notified that families and funeral homes would have to supply grave-digging personnel."

-Ed Mazoue, New Orleans City Real Estate Administrator and Person in Charge of the City's Cemeteries

There's nothing but mud. The ground looks dry and firm,

but underneath is a stew of storm. Stout shovels, rusted,

grow gummed and heavy with what I heft and rearrange.

The sun so often steams me shut, and I have to stop

to gulp sugared bites of tea,

flick away sweat with my swollen fingers,

swat hard at sluggish flies who hover,

And when I start again, there's a rhythm to it,

some ticking jazz that gets my square hips involved.

I craft a chant purely for downbeat:

Plunge. Push. Lift. Toss it.

Plunge. Push. Lift. Toss it.

My untried muscles blaze,

pulse clutches my chest.

Whole clocks later, I pause to relish the feat,

to marvel at the way I've compromised the earth,

how I've been that kind of God for a minute.

But only time has moved.

It's like trying to reach the next world with a spoon.

My boy would have laughed.

Daddy, you better sit down and watch some ball game,

and we'd settle, Sunday lazy,

his squirm balanced on my belly.

He needed what I was and what I wasn't.

Giggling in little language, he lobbed me the ball soft,

walked slower when I was at his side,

shared puffed white bread and purple jelly.

He waited patiently for me after dark

while I shuffled piles of books, looking for

a bedtime drama of spacemen or soldiers,

some crayoned splash to wrap his day around.

But every night, when I opened the door to his room,

was a quivering mountain of Snoopys, Blues, and Scoobys.

Underneath them, his happy body could barely cage breath.

Giggles unleashed his toes. My line, then: Where are yoooou?

Plunge. Push. Lift. Toss it.

Plunge. Push. Lift. Toss-

With the dirt balanced high, screaming my shoulder,

I think hard on those nights of tussle and squeal.

I want to feel his heat and twist in my arms again.

I have to dig.

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Buried by Patricia Smith | Poetry Foundation

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There's nothing but mud. The ground looks dry and firm,

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family

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Hope is the thing with feather by Emily Dickinson

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Hope is the thing with feather by Emily Dickinson

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Notes:

Note to POL students: The inclusion or omission of the numeral in the title of the poem should not affect the accuracy score. It is optional during recitation.

Originally titled "'Hope' is the thing with feathers - (314)"

Emily Dickinson, "'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers" from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permissions of the publishers and Trustees of Amherst College.

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

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"Hope" is the thing with feathers by Emily... | Poetry Foundation

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THE UNDISPUTED GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

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Different Ways to Pray by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Different Ways to Pray by Naomi Shihab Nye

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There was the method of kneeling,

a fine method, if you lived in a country

where stones were smooth.

The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,

hidden corners where knee fit rock.

Their prayers were weathered rib bones,

small calcium words uttered in sequence,

as if this shedding of syllables could somehow

fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long

they walked like sheep.

Under the olive trees, they raised their arms-

Hear us! We have pain on earth!

We have so much pain there is no place to store it!

But the olives bobbed peacefully

in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.

At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,

and were happy in spite of the pain,

because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,

wrapping themselves in new white linen

to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.

When they arrived at Mecca

they would circle the holy places,

they would bend to kiss the earth

and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers

the pilgrimage occurred daily,

lugging water from the spring

or balancing the baskets of grapes.

These were the ones present at births,

humming quietly to perspiring mothers.

The ones stitching intricate needlework into children's dresses,

forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn't care about praying.

The young ones. The ones who had been to America.

They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.

Time?-The old ones prayed for the young ones.

They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,

for the twig, the round moon,

to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one

the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,

who beat everyone at dominoes,

insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,

and was famous for his laugh.

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Different Ways to Pray by Naomi Shihab Nye | Poetry Foundation

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my morning flock
on my freshened feeders.

my starlings, my grackles,
my mated downies, my bully jays,
my seldom seen but much longed-for
goldfinches and cardinals.

About Tony Brown

A poet with a history in slam, lots of publications; my personal poetry and a little bit of daily life and opinions. Read the page called "About..." for the details. View all posts by Tony Brown

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my morning flock on my freshened feeders. my starlings, my grackles, my mated downies, my bully jays, my seldom seen but much longed-for goldfinches and cardinals. I call them "mine" though they flee me whenever I approach as my family does, as my friends do, as my city and country do.

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Second Attempt Crossing by Javier Zamora

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Second Attempt Crossing by Javier Zamora

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In the middle of that desert that didn't look like sand

in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled

"¡La Migra!" and everyone ran.

In that dried creek where 40 of us slept, we turned to each other

and you flew from my side in the dirt.

Black-throated sparrows and dawn

hitting the tops of mesquites,

beautifully. Against the herd of legs,

you sprinted back toward me,

I jumped on your shoulders,

and we ran from the white trucks. It was then the gun

ready to press its index.

I said, "freeze, Chino, ¡pará por favor!"

So I wouldn't touch their legs that kicked you,

you pushed me under your chest,

and I've never thanked you.

the only name I know to call you by -

farewell your tattooed chest:

the M, the S, the 13. Farewell

the phone number you gave me

when you went east to Virginia,

and I went west to San Francisco.

You called twice a month,

then your cousin said the gang you ran from

found you in Alexandria. Farewell

your brown arms that shielded me then,

that shield me now, from La Migra.

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Second Attempt Crossing by Javier Zamora

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In the middle of that desert that didn't look like sand in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled "¡La Migra!" and everyone ran. In that dried creek where 40 of us slept, we turned to each other and you flew from my side in the dirt.

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America by Walt Whitman | Poetry Foundation

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The Little Rock 9 by Afaa Michael Weaver

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The Little Rock 9 by Afaa Michael Weaver

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The Little Rock 9 by Afaa Michael Weaver

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Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins | Poetry Foundation