A Thanksgiving Snark

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes

(1902-1967)

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H.Auden As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: 'Love has no ending. 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, 'I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. 'The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, And the first love of the world.' But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. 'In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss. 'In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day. 'Into many a green valley Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver's brilliant bow. 'O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed. 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead. 'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer, And Jill goes down on her back. 'O look, look in the mirror? O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless. 'O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.' It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, And the deep river ran on.

Following Hadrian

 

Portrait Bust of the Emperor Hadrian, 125-30 CE, via the British Museum, London.

Come let’s follow Hadrian 

Carole Raddato’s wonderful blog.

Tara dear, this is especially for you.

 

Sissingshurst Castle

Barry Unsworth

 

You can read Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth on Internet Archive free. 

Edward Lear by W. H. Auden

Left by his friend to breakfast alone on the white
Italian shore, his Terrible Demon arose
Over his shoulder; he wept to himself in the night,
A dirty landscape-painter who hated his nose.

The legions of cruel inquisitive They
Were so many and big like dogs: he was upset
By Germans and boats; affection was miles away:
But guided by tears he successfully reached his Regret.

How prodigious the welcome was. Flowers took his hat
And bore him off to introduce him to the tongs;
The demon's false nose made the table laugh; a cat
Soon had him waltzing madly, let him squeeze her hand;
Words pushed him to the piano to sing comic songs;

And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.

Explore more at Nonsense Lit.

Arcadia

Annibale Carracci. River Landscape, c1590.

FROM

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, 1593

by Sir Philip Sidney

[O sweet woods]

O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Oh, how much I do like your solitariness! Where man's mind hath a freed consideration, Of goodness to receive lovely direction. Where senses do behold th' order of heav'nly host, And wise thoughts do behold what the creator is; Contemplation here holdeth his only seat, Bounded with no limits, born with a wing of hope, Climbs even unto the stars, nature is under it. Nought disturbs thy quiet, all to thy service yields, Each sight draws on a thought (thought, mother of science) Sweet birds kindly do grant harmony unto thee, Fair trees' shade is enough fortification, Nor danger to thyself if 't be not in thyself. O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Oh, how much I do like your solitariness! Here nor treason is hid, veilëd in innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye finds any harbor here, Nor flatterers' venomous insinuations, Nor coming humorists' puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffered usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling title of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise, Here wrong's name is unheard, slander a monster is; Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt. What man grafts in a tree dissimulation? O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Oh, how well I do like your solitariness! Yet, dear soil, if a soul closed in a mansion As sweet as violets, fair as lily is, Straight as cedar, a voice stains the canary birds, Whose shade safety doth hold, danger avoideth her; Such wisdom that in her lives speculation; Such goodness that in her simplicity triumphs; Where envy's snaky eye winketh or else dieth; Slander wants a pretext, flattery gone beyond; Oh! if such a one have bent to a lonely life, Her steps glad we receive, glad we receive her eyes, And think not she doth hurt our solitariness, For such company decks such solitariness.

---

Source:
A Sixteenth Century Anthology. Arthur Symons, Ed.
London: Blackie & Son, Ltd., 1905. 121-122.

Etymology of poet

poet

c.1300, from O.Fr. poete (12c.), from L. poeta "poet, author," from Gk. poetes "maker, author, poet," from poiein "to make or compose," from PIE *kwoiwo-"making," from base *kwei- "to make" (cf. Skt. cinoti "heaping up, piling up," O.C.S. cinu "act, deed, order"). Replaced O.E. scop (which survives in scoff). Used in 14c., as in classical languages, for all sorts of writers or composers of works of literature. Poète maudit, “a poet insufficiently appreciated by his contemporaries,” lit. “cursed poet,” attested by 1930, from French (1884, Verlaine).

poem

1540s (replacing poesy), from M.Fr. poème (14c.), from L. poema "verse, poetry," from Gk. poema "thing made or created, fiction, poetical work," from poein"to make or compose"

poetry

late 14c., from O.Fr. poetrie (13c.), from M.L. poetria (c.650), from L. poeta (see poet). In classical Latin, poetria meant "poetess." English lacks a true verb form in this group of words, though poeticize (1804), poetize (1580s, from Fr. poétiser), and poetrize (c.1600) all have been tried.

from Douglas Harper Online Etymology Dictionary

Cornel West

"I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope."
— Cornel West

"Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public"
— Cornel West

"Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent."
— Cornel West (Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life)

"To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become. America -- this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of 'no' into the 'yes' -- needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and re-make it."
— Cornel West

Were I a King, by Edward de Vere

Painting by Hans Holbein, the Younger.

Venus and Amor, 1524-25.

Were I a King

Were I a king I could command content ;

Were I obscure, unknown should be my cares;

And were I dead, no thoughts should me torment,

Nor words, nor wrongs, nor loves, nor hopes, nor fears.

A doubtful choice, of three things one to crave,

A kingdom, or a cottage, or a grave.

I Died For Beauty by Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth - the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a-night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.

Illustration©2010Babetteandfriends

Caged Bird, Maya Angelou

freebirdillustration©2011Babetteandfriends

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom

On Order and Housekeeping

Rage for Order

BY DAVID LUNDE

I guess you could call it

a sort of sympathetic magic.

How else to explain

this obsessive reorganizing

of my home, my books, my papers,

my poems, this housekeeping

of my hard drive and floppies,

all the deleting and casting away

of redundancy and obsolescence,

dead files and moved-on addresses

and the scrubbing, the constant

scrubbing and dusting and the howl

of the protesting vacuum

that struggles to inhale

at least the 70% of house-dust

that is dead human skin

some of which might be hers.

Source: Poetry (March 1999)