When my time comes
No one's going to cry for me,
And you won't, either
The hell with all those tears!
I'm a wild beast
Driven out of the herd
Bullets may pierce my skin
But I'll keep coming,
Carrying forward my wounds and my pain
Attacking
Attacking
Until suffering disappears
And I won't give a damn
I want to live another thousand years
by Chairil Anwar (translated from the Indonesian by Burton Raffel)
In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
To the back porch
And slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
Telling me something;
Saying something urgent.
I was happy.
The green apples fell on the sloping roof
And rattled down.
The wind was shaking me all night long;
Shaking me in my sleep
Like a definition of love,
Saying, this is the moment,
Here, now.
by Ruth Stone
For more information about poet, Ruth Stone, see:
Photo Credit: Jan Freeman
Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.
by Philip Larkin
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| Photo Credit: Rick Knief |
