Poems Rethabile Likes

Allegro by Tomas Tranströmer Allegro After a black day, I play Haydn, and feel a little warmth in my hands. The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall. The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence. The sound says that freedom exists and someone pays no tax to Caesar. I shove my hands in my haydnpockets and act like a man who is calm about it all. I raise my haydnflag. The signal is: "We do not surrender. But want peace." The music is a house of glass standing on a slope; rocks are flying, rocks are rolling. The rocks roll straight through the house but every pane of glass is still whole. Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly Poet: Tomas Tranströmer Source: @AYearOfBeingHere Books: @AbeBooks

We Two by H.D. We Two We two are left: I with small grace reveal distaste and bitterness; you with small patience take my hands; though effortless, you scald their weight as a bowl, lined with embers, wherein droop great petals of white rose, forced by the heat too soon to break. We two are left: as a blank wall, the world, earth and the men who talk, saying their space of life is good and gracious, with eyes blank as that blank surface their ignorance mistakes for final shelter and a resting-place. We two remain: yet by what miracle, searching within the tangles of my brain, I ask again, have we two met within this maze of dædal paths in-wound mid grievous stone, where once I stood alone? Poet: H.D. (Hilda Doolitle) Source: @Poets.org Books: @AbeBooks

Pantoum for Black Boys by Taylor Byas --> Pantoum for Black Boys after 'African Night Market' by Walter Battiss (1965) As the sky’s colors separate like oil in water, black men turn blue in the sunset. Flies hover over the tables, circle like buzzards; fruit left for dead. Black men turn blue in the sunset like cotton dipped in indigo. Police circle like buzzards, fruit left for dead – a red smudge on a white sheet. Like cotton dipped in indigo, police lights spotlight the streets; a red smudge on a white sheet marks the end of childhoods. Lights spotlight the streets, but the dark squares of sidewalk mark the end of childhoods, and the mothers have nothing but the dark squares of sidewalk to blame. We light candles, we pray, and the mothers have nothing but an empty room to fill, to lock away, to blame. We light candl...