Poems Rethabile Likes

The Laughing Thrush by W.S. Merwin | Poems Rethabile Likes The Laughing Thrush by W.S. Merwin O nameless joy of the morning tumbling upward note by note out of the night and the hush of the dark valley and out of whatever has not been there song unquestioning and unbounded yes this is the place and the one time in the whole of before and after with all of memory waking into it and the lost visages that hover around the edge of sleep constant and clear and the words that lately have fallen silent to surface among the phrases of some future if there is a future here is where they all sing the first dayl...

Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski | Poems Rethabile Likes Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilat...

Allegro by Tomas Tranströmer | Poems Rethabile Likes Allegro by Tomas Tranströmer Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly 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 flyin...

Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden | Poems Rethabile Likes “Frederick Douglass,” by Robert Hayden read by Shawntay Henry Shawntay Henry reads the poem 'Frederick Douglass' by Robert Hayden . Read along 📖 What I love about Robert Hayden’s “Frederick Douglass” is how it refuses the easy anthem. Hayden doesn't just praise the abolitionist hero; he redefines freedom itself. Freedom, he says, is not a monument or a single man's victory — it is a long, communal breath, something “ever to be earned.” This sonnet hums with restraint and quiet power. Here is the poem in full (listen as you read along): Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as ...

Upon Reading Facts About The Moon by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes Upon Reading Facts About The Moon by Rethabile Masilo When I started writing this, as a confession, a solstice was circling the world, Stonehenge was rife with worshipers, my wife was drinking mojitos and rutting. I sat on the edge of our bed and heard whales calling from the coast below. Sometimes when the mood sets in I'll fling dishes to the sky (manhole covers are too heavy for this), or resort to a frisbee in the park at night, see it wane, then yield to a death its circle finds in words and is captured by them. Big-arse plate for near moon, tea sauce...