"It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers" by Margaret Atwood
While I was building neat castles in the sandbox, the hasty pits were filling with bulldozed corpses and as I walked to the school washed and combed, my feet stepping on the cracks in the cement detonated the red bombs.
Now I am grownup and literate, and I sit in my chair as quietly as a fuse and the jungles are flaming, the under- brush is charged with soldiers, the names on the difficult maps go up in smoke.
I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical toys, my body is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns, my good intentions are completely lethal.
Even my passive eyes transmute everything I look at to the pocked black and white of a war photo, how can I stop myself
It is dangerous to read newspapers.
Each time I hit a key on my electric typewriter, speaking of peaceful trees another village explodes.
"The More Loving One" by W.H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
"The Chimney Sweeper" (Songs of Innocence) by William Blake
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
And so he was quiet; and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, -
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

"Song in spite of myself" by Countee Cullen
Never love with all your heart,
It only ends in aching;
And bit by bit to the smallest part
That organ will be breaking.
Never love with all your mind,
It only ends in fretting;
In musing on sweet joys behind,
Too poignant for forgetting.
Never love with all your soul,
For such there is no ending,
Though a mind that frets may find control
And a shattered heart find mending.
Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed,
Confine some under cover,
And when love goes, bid him God-speed.
And find another lover.
"The Grass has so little to do" by Emily Dickinson
THE GRASS so little has to do,—
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,
And stir all day to pretty tunes 5
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;
And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,— 10
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.
And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep, 15
Or amulets of pine.
And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,—
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were a hay!

"In Memoriam M.K.H." by Seamus Heaney
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
"The Dream Keeper" by Langston Hughes
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
"My Real Dwelling" by Ikkyu
My real dwelling has no pillars and no roof either so rain cannot soak it and wind cannot blow it down!
"Men at Forty" by Donald Justice
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret.
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather,
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
"Endymion" by John Keats
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,

They alway must be with us, or we die.
"Finding a Long Gray Hair" by Jane Kenyon
I scrub the long floorboards in the kitchen, repeating the motions of other women who have lived in this house.
And when I find a long gray hair floating in the pail,
I feel my life added to theirs.
"Caedmon" by Denise Levertov
All others talked as if talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to hunch myself close by the door: then when the talk began
I'd wipe my mouth and wend unnoticed back to the barn to be with the warm beasts, dumb among body sounds of the simple ones.
I'd see by a twist of lit rush the motes of gold moving from shadow to shadow slow in the wake of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows munched or stirred or were still. I was at home and lonely, both in good measure. Until the sudden angel affrighted me--light effacing my feeble beam, a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying: but the cows as before were calm, and nothing was burning, nothing but I, as that hand of fire touched my lips and scorched my tongue into the ring of the dance.
"You Who Wronged (Daylight)" by Czeslaw Milosz

You who wronged a simple man
Bursting into laughter at the crime,
And kept a pack of fools around you
To mix good and evil, to blur the line,
Though everyone bowed down before you,
Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,
Strrking gold medals in your honor,
Glad to have survived another day,
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.
And you'd have done better with a winter dawn,
A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.
"Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I loved — I loved alone —
Then — in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
When the rest of Heaven was blue
Of a demon in my view. —
"Attention" by Saadi Youssef
Those who come by me passing,
I will remember them,

and those who come heavy and overbearing,
I will forget.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
This is why when air gushes between mountains we describe the wind and forget the rocks.
"With No Experience In Such Matters" by Stephen Dunn
To hold a damaged sparrow under water until you feel it die is to know a small something about the mind; how, for example, it blames the cat for the original crime, how it wants praise for its better side.
And yet it's as human as pulling the plug on your Dad whose world has turned to feces and fog, human as--
Well, let's admit, it's a mild thing as human things go.
But I felt the one good wing flutter in my palm-- the smallest protest, if that's what it was,
I ever felt or heard.
Reminded me of how my eyelid has twitched, the need to account for it.
Hard to believe no one notices.
"Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
"The Things That Make A Soldier Great" by Edgar Guest
The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall:
'Tis these that make a soldier great.
He's fighting for them all.
'Tis not the pomp and pride of kings that make a soldier brave;
'Tis not allegiance to the flag that over him may wave;
For soldiers never fight so well on land or on the foam
As when behind the cause they see the little place called home.
Endanger but that humble street whereon his children run,
You make a soldier of the man

who never bore a gun.
What is it through the battle smoke the valiant solider sees?
The little garden far away, the budding apple trees,
The little patch of ground back there, the children at their play,
Perhaps a tiny mound behind the simple church of gray.
The golden thread of courage isn't linked to castle dome
But to the spot, where'er it be -- the humblest spot called home.
And now the lilacs bud again and all is lovely there
And homesick soldiers far away know spring is in the air;
The tulips come to bloom again, the grass once more is green,
And every man can see the spot where all his joys have been.
He sees his children smile at him, he hears the bugle call,
And only death can stop him now -- he's fighting for them all.
"Ode to My Socks" by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)
Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder's hands, two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks, my feet were two fish made of wool, two long sharks sea blue, shot through by one golden thread, two immense blackbirds, two cannons, my feet were honored in this way by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time my feet seemed to me unacceptable like two decrepit firemen,

firemen unworthy of that woven fire, of those glowing socks.
Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation to save them somewhere as schoolboys keep fireflies, as learned men collect sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them in a golden cage and each day give them birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle who hand over the very rare green deer to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on the magnificent socks and then my shoes.
The moral of my ode is this: beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.
"Ode To The Onion" by Pablo Neruda
Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency, and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia, so did the earth make you, onion clear as a planet and destined

to shine, constant constellation, round rose of water, upon the table of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists, but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet, unmoving dance of the snowy anemone and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature.
When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering; what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.