A REQUEST
Should my tongue be tied by stroke
listen to me as if I spoke
and said to you, “My dear, my friend,
stay here a while and take my hand;
my voice is hindered by this clot,
but silence says what I cannot,
and you can answer as you please
such undemanding words as these.
Or let our conversation be
a mute and patient amity,
sitting, all the words bygone,
like a stone beside a stone.
It takes a while to learn to talk
the long language of the rock.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin
THE PRAYING MANTIS
From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
I glimpse the grim, green metal mug
That masks this pseudo-saintly bug,
Orthopterous, also carnivorous,
And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us.
-Ogden Nash
EVERYTHING IS PLUNDERED, BETRAYED, SOLD
Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?
By day, from the surrounding woods,
Cherries blow summer into town;
At night the deep transparent skies
Glitter with new galaxies.
And the miraculous comes so close
To the ruined, dirty houses—
Something not known to anyone at all,
But wild in our breast for centuries.
-Anna Akhmatova
LULLABY
Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
On their mother’s breast,
Hushed by her low lullaby.
Now the glowworms glance,
Now the fireflies dance,
Under fern-boughs green and high;
And the western breeze
To the forest trees
Chants a tuneful lullaby.
Now ‘mid shadows deep
Falls blessed sleep,
Like dew from the summer sky;
And the whole earth dreams,
In the moon’s soft beams,
While night breathes a lullaby.
Now, birdlings, rest,
In your wind-rocked nest,
Unscared by the owl’s shrill cry;
For with folded wings
Little Brier swings,
And singeth your lullaby.
-Louisa May Alcott
Gladsome Lights 