The troopers are riding, are riding by the troopers are riding to kill and die that a clean flag may cleanly fly. They touch the dust in their homes no more, they are clean of the dirt of shop and store, and they ride out clean to war.
From Rhythms, published in 1918.
Unclouded third eye and lush
red wings. I’m pouring water
from cup to cup.
This is the water we are meant
to drink with the other animals.
There are daffodils by the water,
a road leading from the water
to the shining crown of the sun.
My white hospital gown—
off-the-rack and totally sane.
My foot unsteady, though,
heel held aloft, missing its stiletto.
Nine months sober emblazoned
on my flat chest in red
below girlish curls and mannish chin.
You can’t see my eyes.
You’ve never seen them.
Copyright © 2015 by Laura Cronk. Used with permission of the author.
Your eye moving
left to right across
the plowed lines
looking to touch down
on the first
shoots coming up
like a frieze
from the dark where
pale roots
and wood-lice gorge
on mold.
Red haze atop
the far trees.
A two dot, then
a ten dot
ladybug. Within
the wind, a per-
pendicular breeze.
Hold a mirror,
horizontal,
to the rain. Now
the blurred repetition
of ruled lines, the faint
green, quickening,
the doubled tears.
Wake up.
The wind is not for seeing,
neither is the first
song, soon half-
way gone,
and the figures,
the figures are not waiting.
To see what is
in motion you must move.
Copyright © 2015 by Susan Stewart. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 30, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
Be it dark; be it bright;
Be it pain; be it rest;
Be it wrong; be it right—
It must be for the best.
Some good must somewhere wait,
And sometime joy and pain
Must cease to alternate,
Or else we live in vain.
From The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey (Crane & Co., 1910). This poem is in the public domain.