The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
This poem is in the public domain.
(Mather AFB, California, 1956) When we play horses at recess, my name is Moonlily and I’m a yearling mare. We gallop circles around the playground, whinnying, neighing, and shaking our manes. We scrape the ground with scuffed saddle oxfords, thunder around the little kids on swings and seesaws, and around the boys’ ball games. We’re sorrel, chestnut, buckskin, pinto, gray, a herd in pastel dresses and white socks. We’re self-named, untamed, untouched, unridden. Our plains know no fences. We can smell spring. The bell produces metamorphosis. Still hot and flushed, we file back to our desks, one bay in a room of palominos.
From How I Discovered Poetry (Dial Books, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Marilyn Nelson. Used with permission of the author and Penguin Books.
For Shira Shaiman, 1971–2014
It’s easy to forget birth and death
are partners, hovering in a corner
at an otherwise pleasant party.
Right after the arrival of her second
child, the doctor said, It’s
back: the cancer. My friend writes
the update now, subject heading
something with the word “joy.”
The message lists the baby’s weight,
his height, his favorite song—facts strung
along like blue and white pennants.
She tells us, too, that doctors agree:
no more options exist. I read the mass
email in my office, desk lumped
with half-assed student essays, bowl
of Dum Dums, quorum of hand sanitizers.
What is it that I had been worrying about?
We treat these bodies like rented
ponies. Wash them for the big events,
tie pink ribbons in manes,
then load them down again, ignore
them until everything slows to a stop
in a circle of circles. My friend
continues with what she wishes for,
wishing as if such a thing were possible,
as if a birthday cake were being carried
from the kitchen, the rest of us searching
for the light switch and the right pitch.
She leans in, candles casting a yellow
circle onto her face. It’s peaceful, she says.
In my twenties, I worried about what I wanted
to be. Now I know. I want to be old.
From Code (Black Lawrence Press, 2020) by Charlotte Pence. Copyright © 2020 Charlotte Pence. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
From The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1947, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1942, 1951 by Robert Frost, copyright © 1970, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.