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	So They Say The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. -Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream _________________________ Sam Testa January 22, 1920 October 13, 1990 _________________________ Forever My father tells me that when he was a boy he once crashed a ball through a neighbor's window. He does not mean to, but he lies. I know that aeons ago the world was ice and mud and fish climbed out of the sea to reptiles on land to dinosaurs and mammals; and I know also that archeologists have found remains of ancient times when men lived in caves and worshipped weather. Nonetheless I know that my father, a grown man, coming home at night with work-lines in his face and love for me hidden behind the newspaper in his hand, has always been so since the world began. -Eve Merriam _________________________ Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. - Robert Frost _________________________ My Little One My little one whose tongue is dumb, whose fingers cannot hold to things, who is so mercilessly young he leaps upon the instant things. I hold you not. Indeed, who could? He runs into the burning wood. Follow, follow, if you can! He will come out grown to a man and not remember whom he kissed, who caught him by the slender wrist and bound him by a tender yoke which, understanding not, he broke. Tennessee Williams ____________________ As Much As You Can And if you cannot make your life as you want it, at least try this as much as you can: do not disgrace it in the crowding contact with the world, in the many movements and all the talk. Do not disgrace it by taking it, dragging it around often and exposing it to the daily folly of relationships and associations, till it becomes like an alien burdensome life. -Cavafy ____________________ Covenant If you are happy, I will give you an apple, if you are anxious, I will twist your arm, and if you permit me, I will be glad to hold you close to my heart forever and do you no harm. If I am happy, will you give me an apple? If I am anxious, you may twist my arm. And if you would like to, I would like you to hold me close to your heart forever and do me no harm. This is a bargain, only two can make it. This is a covenant offered with desperate calm, it being uncertain that lovers can drive out demons with the gift of an apple or the twist of an arm. Tennessee Williams ____________________ All force strives forward to work far and wide To live and grow and ever to expand; Yet we are checked and thwarted on each side By the world's flux and swept along like sand: In this internal storm and outward tide We hear a promise, hard to understand: From the compulsion that all creatures binds, Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds. -Goethe, The Mysteries ___________________ The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. -Robert Frost ____________________ The Girl Who Died #1 "Look!" she cried. "I am not perfect but still your sister. Love me!" But the mob beat her and kicked her and shaved her head; until she saw exactly how wrong she was. -Alice Walker ____________________ Voices Ideal and dearly beloved voices of those who are dead, or of those who are lost to us like the dead. Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams; sometimes in thought the mind hears them. And for a moment with their echo other echoes return from the first poetry of ours lives- like music that extinguishes the far-off night. -Cavafy _________________________ Lament For The Moths A plague has stricken the moths, the moths are dying, their bodies are flakes of bronze on the carpets lying. Enemies of the delicate everywhere have breathed a pestilent mist into the air. Lament for the velvety moths, for the moths were lovely. Often their tender thoughts, for they thought of me, eased the neurotic ills that haunt the day. Now an invisible evil takes them away. I move through the shadowy room, I cannot be still, I must find where the treacherous killer is concealed. Feverishly I search and still they fall as fragile as ashes broken against a wall. Now that the plague has taken the moths away, who will be cooler than curtains against the day, who will come early and softly to ease my lot as I move through the shadowy rooms with a troubled heart? -Tennessee Williams _________________________ Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it. Shakespeare - As You Like It ____________________ Faint As Leaf Shadow Faint as leaf shadow does he fade and do you fade in touching him. And as you fade, the afternoon fades with you and is cool and dim. A wall that rises through no space, division which is shadow-thin his eyelids close upon your eyes quicksilver which bewilders him. And then you softly say his name as though his name upon your tongue a wall could lift against the drift of shadow that he fades among. Sometimes those frontiers of the twain may seem no longer to exist, but why then is the breath disturbed, and does the silver body twist, and why the whisper of a name as though inquiring, Is it true? Which goes unanswered until sleep has loosened his fierce hold of you. -Tennessee Williams ____________________ Desires Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum, with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet- that is how desires look that have passed without fulfillment; without one of them having achieved a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn. -Cavafy ____________________ Hope Is The Thing With Feathers Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. -Emily Dickenson ____________________ The Unknown Citizen (To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. -W.H. Auden ____________________ Words We are spendthrifts with words, We squander them, Toss them like pennies in the air- Arrogant words, Angry words, Cruel words, Comradely words, Shy words tiptoeing from mouth to ear. But the slowly wrought words of love And the thunderous words of heartbreak- These we hoard. -Pauli Murry _________________________ A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. -Oscar Wilde ____________________ Somehow and for some vague and inane reason, we have decided it is better to be exploited, misused, battered and bedraggled than to become disagreeable. We think that possibly the brute, who is prepared to treat a victim in the most unkind way, will be coerced into being more kind if the victim is courteous. I don't agree. If I am attacked, when I have done nothing to warrant an attack, or even if I have, I work myself up into a fury much more explosive than the miscreant can imagine. I jump into a righteous lather. And I mean to make myself more to deal with than the brute can handle. I mean, if I can make myself get mad before I get scared - the evildoer will rue the day. -Maya Angelou ____________________ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Martin Luther King Jr. ____________________ Lord, girl, there's only two or three things I know for sure.... Only two or three things. That's right.... Of course it's never the same things, and I'm never as sure as I'd like to be. -Dorothy Allison ____________________ And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful then the risk it took to Blossom. -Anais Nin ____________________ I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. -Alice Walker ____________________ I don't mind straight people so long as they act gay in public. T-shirt slogan ___________________ You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same. T-shirt slogan ___________________ We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory… stretching to every living heart… will yet swell the chorus… when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. -Abraham Lincoln ___________________ What Happens To A Dream Deferred? What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over- Like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? -Langston Hughes ____________________ I started out with nothing and I still have most of it left! -Unknown ____________________ All of these moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. -The Blade Runner ____________________ To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. -William Blake ____________________ The Young Desire It In the land below the winds a boy runs swift with gallows's feet. He runs through tundra stripped as bare as any lover in your arms. Could I still run I would compete with the wind's own shining feet. -Oswell Blakeston ____________________ I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers. -Kahlil Gibran ____________________ In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends. -Martin Luther King ____________________ The Leaden-Eyed Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not the they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die, but that they die like sheep. -Vachel Lindsay ____________________ The longest day must have its close. The gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal inexorable lapse of moments Is ever hurrying the day of evil to an eternal night And the night of the just to an eternal day. -Harriet Beecher Stowe ____________________ When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon it shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. -Mark Twain ____________________ Among School Children Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? -William Butler Yeats ____________________ When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities. -Matt Groening ____________________ A Theory Of Holes: When you find yourself in one, stop digging! -Unknown ____________________ Monotony One monotonous day follows another identical monotony. The same things will happen, they will happen again- the same moments find us and leave us. A month passes and ushers in another month. One can easily guess the coming events; they are those tedious of yesterday. And the morrow ends by not resembling a morrow. -Cavafy ____________________ Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Shakespeare - Macbeth ____________________ Candles The days of our future stand before us like a row of little lighted candles- golden, warm, and lively little candles. The days gone by remain behind us, a mournful line of burnt-out candles; the nearest ones are still smoking, cold candles, melted and bent. I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me, and it saddens me to recall their first light. I look ahead at my lighted candles. I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder- how quickly the somber line lengthens, how quickly the burnt-out candles multiply. -Cavafy ____________________ Birches When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice storms do. Often you must have seem them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. -Robert Frost ____________________