What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river. He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river. High on the shore sat the great god Pan While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river. He cut it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor dry empty thing In holes, as he sat by the river. 'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan (Laughed while he sat by the river), 'The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed.' Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river. Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,— For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.
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.
I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.
I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.
But it was High up there! It was high!
So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love—
But for livin' I was born
Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.
Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
This poem is in the public domain.
I
Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example— I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to such a degree that, for example, your hands tied behind your back, your back to the wall, or else in a laboratory in your white coat and safety glasses, you can die for people— even for people whose faces you’ve never seen, even though you know living is the most real, the most beautiful thing. I mean, you must take living so seriously that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees— and not for your children, either, but because although you fear death you don’t believe it, because living, I mean, weighs heavier.
II
Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery— which is to say we might not get up from the white table. Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad about going a little too soon, we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told, we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining, or still wait anxiously for the latest newscast. . . Let’s say we’re at the front— for something worth fighting for, say. There, in the first offensive, on that very day, we might fall on our face, dead. We’ll know this with a curious anger, but we’ll still worry ourselves to death about the outcome of the war, which could last years. Let’s say we’re in prison and close to fifty, and we have eighteen more years, say, before the iron doors will open. We’ll still live with the outside, with its people and animals, struggle and wind— I mean with the outside beyond the walls. I mean, however and wherever we are, we must live as if we will never die.
III
This earth will grow cold, a star among stars and one of the smallest, a gilded mote on blue velvet— I mean this, our great earth. This earth will grow cold one day, not like a block of ice or a dead cloud even but like an empty walnut it will roll along in pitch-black space . . . You must grieve for this right now —you have to feel this sorrow now— for the world must be loved this much if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .
From Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, published by Persea Books. Copyright © 1994 by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Used with the permission of Persea Books. All rights reserved.
Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay Bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke On the old one's ragged end. I bite my tongue As the end of me—of my rope of stuff and nonsense (The nonsense held, it was the stuff that broke), Of bones and light, of levity and crime, Of reddish clay and hope—still bides its time. Each of my pots is quite unusable, Even for contemplating as an object Of gross unuse. In its own mode of being Useless, though, each of them remains unique, Subject to nothing, and themselves unseeing, Stronger by virtue of what makes them weak. I pound at all my clay. I pound the air. This senseless lump, slapped into something like Something, sits bound around by my despair. For even as the great Creator's free Hand shapes the forms of life, so—what? This pot, Unhollowed solid, too full of itself, Runneth over with incapacity. I put it with the others on the shelf. These tiny cups will each provide one sip Of what's inside them, aphoristic prose Unwilling, like full arguments, to make Its points, then join them in extended lines Like long draughts from the bowl of a deep lake. The honey of knowledge, like my milky slip, Firms slowly up against what merely flows. Some of my older pieces bore inscriptions That told a story only when you'd learned How not to read them: LIVE reverted to EVIL, EROS kept running backwards into SORE. Their words, all fired up for truth, got burned. I'll not write on weak vessels any more. My juvenalia? I gave them names In those days: Hans was all handles and no spout; Bernie believed the whole world turned about Himself alone; Sadie was close to James (But Herman touched her bottom when he could); Paul fell to pieces; Peter wore away To nothing; Len was never any good; Alf was a flat, random pancake, May An opened blossom; Bud was an ash-tray. Even their names break off, though; Whatsisface, That death-mask of Desire, and—you know!— The smaller version of that (Oh, what was it?— You know . . .) All of my pots now have to go By number only. Which is no disgrace. Begin with being—in an anagram Of unending—conclude in some dark den; This is no matter. What I've been, I am: What I will be is what I make of all This clay, this moment. Now begin again . . . Poured out of emptiness, drop by slow drop, I start up at the quarreling sounds of water. Pots cry out silently at me to stop. What are we like? A barrelfull of this Oozy wet substance, shadow-crammed, whose smudges Of darkness lurk within but rise to kiss The fingers that disturb the gently edges Of their bland world of shapelessness and bliss. The half-formed cup cries out in agony, The lump of clay suffers a silent pain. I heard the cup, though, full of feeling, say "O clay be true, O clay keep constant to Your need to take, again and once again, This pounding from your mad creator who Only stops hurting when he's hurting you." What will I then have left behind me? Over The years I have originated some Glazes that wear away at what they cover And weep for what they never can become. My Deadware, widely imitated; blue Skyware of an amazing lightness; tired Hopewear that I abandoned for my own Good reasons; Hereware; Thereware; ware that grew Weary of everything that earth desired; Hellware that dances while it's being fired, Noware that vanishes while being thrown. Appearing to be silly, wisdom survives Like tribes of superseded gods who go Hiding in caves of triviality From which they laughingly control our lives. So with my useless pots: safe from the blow Of carelessness, or outrage at their flaws, They brave time's lion and his smashing paws. —All of which tempts intelligence to call Pure uselessness one more commodity. The Good-for-Nothing once became our Hero, But images of him, laid-back, carelessly Laughing, were upright statues after all. From straight above, each cup adds up to zero. Clay to clay: Soon I shall indeed become Dumb as these solid cups of hardened mud (Dull terra cruda colored like our blood); Meanwhile the slap and thump of palm and thumb On wet mis-shapenness begins to hum With meaning that was silent for so long. The words of my wheel's turning come to ring Truer than Truth itself does, my great Ding Dong-an-sich that echoes everything (Against it even lovely bells ring wrong): Its whole voice gathers up the purest parts Of all our speech, the vowels of the earth, The aspirations of our hopeful hearts Or the prophetic sibilance of song.
From Harp Lake, by John Hollander, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Copyright © 1988 by John Hollander. Used with permission.