When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
This poem is in the public domain.
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
“Remember.” Copyright © 1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
your little voice Over the wires came leaping and i felt suddenly dizzy With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers wee skipping high-heeled flames courtesied before my eyes or twinkling over to my side Looked up with impertinently exquisite faces floating hands were laid upon me I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing up Up with the pale important stars and the Humorous moon dear girl How i was crazy how i cried when i heard over time and tide and death leaping Sweetly your voice
From Tulips and Chimneys (Thomas Seltzer, 1923) by E. E. Cummings. This poem is in the public domain.
—Heather Christle
You meet someone and inside of them
you know there swells
a small country brimming
with steel and beasts of labor.
You love the country
and so you fear it.
Its flora fascinates you.
You wish to visit, though
you worry you won’t
wear the right clothes, that you'll fail
assure the clerk in the flower
shop you aren’t a thief.
They’re only roses. They remind you
of the one you love.
Even with your eyes closed
in your own mouth you’d know
they’re roses.
Copyright © 2018 by David Welch. Used with the permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Quarterly West Issue 94.
From Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017) Copyright © 2017 by Danez Smith. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
On a sheer peak of joy we meet;
Below us hums the abyss;
Death either way allures our feet
If we take one step amiss.
One moment let us drink the blue
Transcendent air together—
Then down where the same old work's to do
In the same dull daily weather.
We may not wait . . . yet look below!
How part? On this keen ridge
But one may pass. They call you—go!
My life shall be your bridge.
From Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909). This poem is in the public domain.
You map my cheeks in gelatinous dark, your torso
floating, a forgotten moon, and a violin
crosses the sheets while you kiss me your mouth
of castanets. I believed once my uncles lived
in trees, from the encyclopedia I’d carried
to my father, The Philippines, the Ilongot hunting
from a branch, my father’s chin in shadows. I try
to tell you about distance, though my body
unstitches, fruit of your shoulder lit by the patio
lamp, grass of you sticky with dew, and all
our unlit places folding, one
into another. By dead night: my face in the pillow,
your knuckles in my hair, my father whipping my
back. How to lift pain from desire, the word
safety from safe, me, and the wind
chatters down gutters, rumoring
rain. I graze your stubble, lose my edges mouthing your
name. To love what we can no longer
distinguish, we paddle the other’s darkness, whisper
the bed, cry the dying violet hour; you twist
your hands of hard birches, and we peel into
our shadows, the losing of our names.
From For Want of Water (Beacon Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Sasha Pimentel. Used with permission from Beacon Press.