Lucille Clifton

[xanderschild.livejournal.com]

homage to my hips

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

(no subject)

[bay-state-magi.livejournal.com]

Mourning Pablo Neruda

By Robert Bly

Water is practical,
especially
in August.
Faucet water
falls
into the buckets
I carry
to the young
willow trees
whose leaves
have been eaten
off
by grasshoppers.
Or this jar of water
that lies
next to me
on the car seat
as I drive
to my shack.
When I look down,
the seat all
around the jar
is dark,
for water doesn't intend
to give, it gives
anyway
and the jar of water
lies
there quivering
as I drive
through a countryside
of granite quarries.
stones
soon to be shaped
into blocks for the dead,
the only
thing they have
left that is theirs.

For the dead remain inside
us, as water
remains inside granite--
hardly at all--
for their job is to
go
away,
and not come back,
even when we ask them,
but water
comes to us--
it doesn't care
about us; it goes
around us, on the way
to the Minnesota River,
to the Mississippi river,
to the Gulf,
always closer
to where
it has to be.

No one lays flowers
on the grave
of water,
for it is not
here,
it is
gone.

"To Say Before Going to Sleep"

[opalite.livejournal.com]

I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.
I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.
I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.
And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.

The clocks are striking, calling to each other,
and one can see right to the edge of time.
Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.
Beyond that there is silence.

My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.

-- Rilke
translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Ogden Nash - Summer Serenade

[hopeless100.livejournal.com]

When the thunder stalks the sky,
When tickle-footed walks the fly,
When shirt is wet and throat is dry,
Look, my darling, that's July.

Through the grassy lawn be leather,
And prickly temper tug the tether,
Shall we postpone our love for weather?
If we must melt, let's melt together!