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.
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.
Great Oracle, why are you staring at me, do I baffle you, do I make you despair? I, Americus, the American, wrought from the dark in my mother long ago, from the dark of ancient Europa— Why are you staring at me now in the dusk of our civilization— Why are you staring at me as if I were America itself the new Empire vaster than any in ancient days with its electronic highways carrying its corporate monoculture around the world And English the Latin of our days— Great Oracle, sleeping through the centuries, Awaken now at last And tell us how to save us from ourselves and how to survive our own rulers who would make a plutocracy of our democracy in the Great Divide between the rich and the poor in whom Walt Whitman heard America singing O long-silent Sybil, you of the winged dreams, Speak out from your temple of light as the serious constellations with Greek names still stare down on us as a lighthouse moves its megaphone over the sea Speak out and shine upon us the sea-light of Greece the diamond light of Greece Far-seeing Sybil, forever hidden, Come out of your cave at last And speak to us in the poet's voice the voice of the fourth person singular the voice of the inscrutable future the voice of the people mixed with a wild soft laughter— And give us new dreams to dream, Give us new myths to live by!
Read at Delphi, Greece, on March 21, 2001 at the UNESCO World Poetry Day
Reprinted from San Francisco Poems by permission of City Lights Foundation. Copyright © 2001 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. All rights reserved.
To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow,
Betrayed, like him whose woe dimmed eyes gave bliss
Still must one succor those who brought one low,
To be a Negro in a day like this.
To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands rare patience—patience that can wait
In utter darkness. ’Tis the path to miss,
And knock, unheeded, at an iron gate,
To be a Negro in a day like this.
To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag
Which is to us white freedom’s emphasis.
Ah! one must love when Truth and Justice lag,
To be a Negro in a day like this.
To be a Negro in a day like this—
Alas! Lord God, what evil have we done?
Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst,
But I pass by, the glorious goal unwon,
“Merely a Negro”—in a day like this!
The Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace and Company) by James Weldon Johnson. This poem is in the public domain.
the day after the mulberry tree fell on its belly, the army bombed a truck
full of black umbrellas sent from russia against the tyranny of rain. they
said, the black umbrellas are no longer allowed in the mountains. hats
are. guns are. gods are. the trees are offensive to the sky. then
they called our language mountain, then they pronounced it dead.
we are in a dream, you said. undo the pain before you speak
against the gods with mouths full of rain. a tongue cut in half
becomes sharper, you said. date your wound.
Copyright © 2020 by Öykü Tekten. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 21, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
I was called back into the dark during an early morning flyover onto a rusty mauve plain fields overrun with a low river of tar the smell of burning grass carried from the east flowing upward through neon bright signs of pharmaceuticals and snow a bronze liquid of promise a fleeting and always-ending sleep the remains of chipped concrete eating away the foundations of every building tables of salt rising over the whole country I was called onto a platform in the north a miles- wide outpost where I sat waiting to hear what new harm my sisters had conjured they reached me by phone through a star or their dreams a breaking request from our father that had traveled through a long and oily channel I could understand its beauty the rainbow-thick shimmer of pigment and poison a seeping fissure of love before the apocalypse the ruin or just the overhanging clouds yesterday a maker of brine and sauerkraut told me the world would end by corrosion and decay I’m not so sure I hear the eruption between refusal and insistence or maybe just a truck driving through
Copyright © 2020 by Samuel Ace. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 2, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“and the people live till they have white hair”
―E. M. Price
The dry brown coughing beneath their feet,
(Only for a while, for the handyman is on his way)
These people walk their golden gardens.
We say ourselves fortunate to be driving by today.
That we may look at them, in their gardens where
The summer ripeness rots. But not raggedly.
Even the leaves fall down in lovelier patterns here.
And the refuse, the refuse is a neat brilliancy.
When they flow sweetly into their houses
With softness and slowness touched by that everlasting gold,
We know what they go to. To tea. But that does not mean
They will throw some little black dots into some water and add sugar and the juice of the cheapest lemons that are sold,
While downstairs that woman’s vague phonograph bleats, “Knock me a kiss.”
And the living all to be made again in the sweatingest physical manner
Tomorrow. . . . Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble.
Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner.
Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And
Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours.
It is just that so often they live till their hair is white.
They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers. . . .
Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people.
At least, nobody driving by in this car.
It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us
How much more fortunate they are than we are.
It is only natural that we should look and look
At their wood and brick and stone
And think, while a breath of pine blows,
How different these are from our own.
We do not want them to have less.
But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough.
We drive on, we drive on.
When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff.
Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.
When in the morning’s misty hour,
When the sun beams gently o’er each flower;
When thou dost cease to smile benign,
And think each heart responds with thine,
When seeking rest among divine,
Forget me not.
When the last rays of twilight fall,
And thou art pacing yonder hall;
When mists are gathering on the hill,
Nor sound is heard save mountain rill,
When all around bids peace be still,
Forget me not.
When the first star with brilliance bright,
Gleams lonely o’er the arch of night;
When the bright moon dispels the gloom,
And various are the stars that bloom,
And brighten as the sun at noon,
Forget me not.
When solemn sighs the hollow wind,
And deepen’d thought enraps the mind;
If e’er thou doest in mournful tone,
E’er sigh because thou feel alone,
Or wrapt in melancholy prone,
Forget me not.
When bird does wait thy absence long,
Nor tend unto its morning song;
While thou art searching stoic page,
Or listening to an ancient sage,
Whose spirit curbs a mournful rage,
Forget me not.
Then when in silence thou doest walk,
Nor being round with whom to talk;
When thou art on the mighty deep,
And do in quiet action sleep;
If we no more on earth do meet,
Forget me not.
When brightness round thee long shall bloom,
And knelt remembering those in gloom;
And when in deep oblivion's shade,
This breathless, mouldering form is laid,
And thy terrestrial body staid,
Forget me not.
“Should sorrow cloud thy coming years,
And bathe thy happiness in tears,
Remember, though we’re doom’d to part,
There lives one fond and faithful heart,
That will forget thee not.”
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 2, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
The week after Thanksgiving and the stores are decked out
for holiday shopping including a TJ Maxx where what was
once too expensive loses its value and attracts us, there is a
store with a big yellow banner proclaiming GIANT BOOK SALE,
a seasonal operation of remaindered books, which doesn’t mean
that the books aren’t good, only that the great machinery
of merchandising didn’t engage its gears in quite the right way
and I buy two books of poetry and am leaving the store, the first snowstorm
of the winter on the way and as I get to the glass double doors
a bearded man with a cane is entering, he has been walking
with a woman who is continuing on to another store and he
has the look that could make him either eccentrically brilliant
or just plain simple and as I open the door and he opens the other side
he turns and says “I love you,” not to me but calling back to his
friend who is departing, only he’s said it looking at me, closest
to me, which is unintended love, random love, love that
should be spread throughout the world, shouted in our ears for free.
From Prayers and Run-on Sentences (Deerbrook Editions, 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Used with permission of the author.
this one spins,
they all glitter
like a crush’s toothy smile.
beauty supply of Black power peace sign afro picks
& a crayola big box of durags to choose from.
beauty supply shelves with sleeves
of weaves glimmering in the harsh light.
every manner of oil & grease
& spritz & spray for the coaxing
of curl under comb
who can think of a rat tail without a tear
for the nostalgia or the tenderheaded memory?
a rubber band of any conceivable size.
a barette of two balls clacking hard with every neck roll.
all the ribbons & bows.
the eyebrow lady wielding two ends
of a thread like the sculptor’s most precious tool.
all the tools for the trade of looking
& you, little boy, get such a precious few.
Copyright © 2021 by Nate Marshall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 29, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
In the beginning there was darkness,
then a bunch of other stuff—and lots of people.
Some things were said and loosely interpreted,
or maybe things were not communicated clearly.
Regardless—there has always been an index.
That thing about the meek—how we
shall inherit the earth; that was a promise
made in a treaty at the dawn of time
agreed upon in primordial darkness
and documented in the spiritual record.
The nature of the agreement was thus:
The world will seemingly be pushed past capacity.
A new planet will be “discovered” 31 light-years away.
Space travel will advance rapidly,
making the journey feasible. The ice sheets will melt.
Things will get ugly. The only way to leave
will be to buy a ticket. Tickets will be priced at exactly
the amount that can be accrued
by abandoning basic humanity.
The index will show how you came by your fortune:
If you murdered, trafficked or exploited the vulnerable,
stole, embezzled, poisoned, cheated, swindled,
or otherwise subdued nature to come by wealth
great enough to afford passage to the new earth;
if your ancestors did these things and you’ve done nothing
to benefit from their crimes yet do nothing to atone
through returning inherited wealth to the greater good
you shall be granted passage. It was agreed.
The meek shall stay, the powerful shall leave.
And it all shall start again.
The meek shall inherit the earth,
and what shall we do with it,
but set about putting aside our meekness?
Copyright © 2020 by Rena Priest. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 4, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.