Death poems

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Victory

© Adrienne Rich

Suddenly instead of art we're eyeing
organisms traced and stained on cathedral transparencies
cruel blues embroidered purples succinct yellows
a beautiful tumor

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

© Adrienne Rich

The autumn feels slowed down,

summer still holds on here, even the light

Orion

© Adrienne Rich

Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you're young

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

© Adrienne Rich

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

Death and Co

© Sylvia Plath

Two, of course there are two.
It seems perfectly natural now——
The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
And balled¸ like Blake's.
Who exhibits

On the Welch Language

© Katherine Philips

If honor to an ancient name be due,

Or riches challenge it for one that's new,

All because i loved you

© Olu Oguibe

once i wrote with the irreverence of youth

and the fire of a heart burning to ash

The Four Seasons

© Obi Nwakanma

The forest hugs them
carves them into stones,
Etches them into the slow
eastern landscape: rivers, hills
the slow running water,
times broken inscapes…

The Earthly Paradise: Apology

© William Morris

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,

I cannot ease the burden of your fears,

Once I was sailing for fun (Simple Verses XII)

© José Martí

Once I was sailing for fun
On a lake of great allure,
Like gold the sun shone so pure,
And my soul more than the sun.

A Sincere Man Am I

© José Martí

A sincere man am I
From the land where palm trees grow,
And I want before I die
My soul's verses to bestow.

Here the jack-hammer jabs into the ocean;
My heart, you race and stagger and demand
More blood-gangs for your nigger-brass percussions,
Till I, the stunned machine of your devotion,
Clanging upon this cymbal of a hand,
Am rattled screw and footloose. All discussions

Inheritance-His

© Audre Lorde

Does an image of return
wealthy and triumphant
warm your chilblained fingers
as you count coins in the Manhattan snow
or is it only Linda
who dreams of home?

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.

Resignation

THERE is no flock however watched and tended
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside howsoe'er defended
But has one vacant chair!

There is no Fatwa in this Land

There is no fatwa in this land –
it is divided into
thousands of small conspiracies,
tiny murders per partes,
which seem like coincidental misfortunes
and sap your blood, drop by drop.

Movimiento estudiantil

My dear students,
little pigeons from the Forja factory in Buenos Aires.
The institution we built together has become
a hangar for hanging pieces of discounted meat.