Mind Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up

into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Rabindranath Tagore
From Gitanjali

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

The Brown Man's Burden

Pile on the brown man's burden
To gratify your greed;
Go, clear away the "niggers"
Who progress would impede;
Be very stern, for truly
'Tis useless to be mild
With new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Pile on the brown man's burden;
And, if ye rouse his hate,
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
With Maxims up to date.
With shells and dumdum bullets
A hundred times made plain
The brown man's loss must ever
Imply the white man's gain.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don't hesitate to shoot.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
And if his cry be sore,
That surely need not irk you--
Ye've driven slaves before.
Seize on his ports and pastures,
The fields his people tread;
Go make from them your living,
And mark them with his dead.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
And through the world proclaim
That ye are Freedom's agent--
There's no more paying game!
And, should your own past history
Straight in your teeth be thrown,
Retort that independence
Is good for whites alone.

-By Henry Labouchère


*poster's note: this is the response to the white man's burden etc.

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child

Take up the White Man’s burden

In patience to abide

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple

An hundred times made plain

To seek another’s profit

And work another’s gain

Take up the White Man’s burden—

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better

The hate of those ye guard—

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah slowly) to the light:

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

“Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden-

Have done with childish days-

The lightly proffered laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

-rudyard kipling

Mr. BOOM BOOM Man

Here he comes!

Distorted bass

nearly three blocks away

I wait

at the mercy of the traffic light

waitin

n waitin

for it to change

from red to green

so I won't have to deal

with him . . .

Mr. BOOM BOOM Man.

But my rearview mirror

it doesn't lie

n pumping his system

from my behind

I see his calling card

baby lavender twinkle lights

hugging a chrome-plated license plate

five-digit proclamation:

Double O Bad

coming at me!

A fifty-pound medallion

heaving a hickey-stained neck

closer

to the center of his manhood:

his beeper.

He pulls up slowly . . .

lowered Nissan mini truck

fills the vacancy on my left

n as the automatic tinted window

makes it slow way down,

I start to wonder

Why,

why can't I be like the cool girls

and like the cars that go:

BOOM BA BOOM . . . ?

Dig the way quarters

bounce off vinyl roofs?

Funky, fresh and stoopid

they say.

But then a flash

of gold gilded teeth

blinds my thoughts

n Mr. BOOM BOOM

shouts out:

Hey!

Sen-yo-reeeeta!

mamacita!

You speak English?

Hey . . . YOU

I'm talkin' to you . . .

aaah, you deaf bitch!

And then

I remember.

I wanna yell out,

Yeah, I speak English,

Pig Latin too

so Uckfay Offay

Mr. BOOM BOOM

Take your fade

n f-f-fade away!

But the light has turned green

n I don't have the time

(or the balls, really)

I take off

FAST

leaving behind

Mr. BOOM BOOM

Bu-foon.

-Michele Serros

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

-- Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

-William Wordsworth

Reminiscence

There are times when I’ll dream in black and white
And remember the good times that we shared
But, now I fear the coming of the night
Because I am so very ill prepared.

Days will pass by, and wounds will start to heal
Alas all ground is lost with things I hear
For that is all it takes for scabs to peel
Unexpected from whom I once held near.

They say you never get over first love
And I believe that this is very true
Memories with you stay white like a dove
But for now I’ll sit here, a little blue

Even though I had given up on us
Never forget what we had - that’s a must

Votive

O Moon, swung there immeasurably far,

Yet only in the pear-tree top, how then

Shall we body in thought the beauty that you are ---

Your wizardry upon the souls of men?

Hush? Let us say it is the tender light

That falls in silver circumstance and red

Dimly upon the regions of the night,

And saying this how little then is said.

Why should this mute enchantment thus possess

Our hearts in adoration -- how should come

This worship of a ghost of quietness,

Of spectral tides that move not and are dumb?

Why do we worship? We are but strays of will,

While the sun takes us. Folded now and far

From the day's light, we are minds possessed and still,

Vision and peace. We worship what we are.

-John Drinkwater

Mole

Tunnelled in solid blackness creeps

The old mole-soul, and wakes or sleeps

He knows not which, but tunnels on

Through ages of oblivion;

Until at last the long constraint

Of each-hand wall is lost, and faint

Comes daylight creeping from afar,

And mole-work grows crepuscular.

Tunnel meets air and bursts; mole sees

Men hugely walking . . . or are they trees?

And far horizons smoking blue,

And chasing clouds for ever new;

Green hills, like lighted lamps aglow

Or quenching 'neath the cloud-shadow;

Quenching and blazing turn by turn,

Spring's great green signals fitfully burn.

Mole travels on, but finds the steering

A harder task of pioneering

Than when he thridded through the strait

Blind catacombs that ancient fate

Had carved for him. Stupid and dumb

And blind and touchless he had come

A way without a turn; but here,

Under the sky, the passenger

Chooses his own best way; and mole

Distracted wanders, yet his hole

Regrets not much wherein he crept,

But runs, a joyous nympholept,

This way and that, by all made mad -----

River nymph and oread,

Ocean's daughters and Lorelei,

Combing the silken mystery,

The glaucous gold of her rivery tresses -----

Each haunts the traveller, each possesses

The drunken wavering soul awhile;

Then with a phantom's cock-crow smile

Mocks craving with sheer vanishment.

Mole-eyes grow hawk's: knowledge is lent

In grudging driblets that pay high,

Unconscionable usury

To unrelenting life, Mole learns

To travel more secure; the turns

Of his long way less puzzling seem,

And all those magic forms that gleam

In airy invitation cheat

Less often than they did of old.

The earth slopes upward, fold on fold

Of quiet hills that meet the gold

Serenity of western skies.

Over the world's edge with clear eyes

Our mole transcendent sees his way

Tunnelled in light : he must obey

Necessity again and thrid

Close catacombs as erst he did,

Fate's tunnellings, himself must bore

Thorough the sunset's inmost core.

The guiding walls to each-hand shine

Luminous and crystalline;

And mole shall tunnel on and on,

Till night let fall oblivion.

-A. L. Huxley

Tanka

autumn. a bonfire

of leaves. morning peels us toward

pomegranate festivals.

and in the evening i bring

you soup cooled by my laughter.

-Sonia Sanchez

Blues

will you love me baby when the sun goes down

i say will you love me baby when the sun goes down

or you just a summertime man leaving fo winter comes round.

will you keep me baby when i'm feeling down 'n' out

i say will you hold me baby when i'm feeling down 'n' out

or will you just stop & spit while i lives from hand to mouth.

done drunk so much of you i staggers in my sleep

i say done drunk so much of you man, i staggers in my sleep

when i wakes up baby, gonna start me on a brand new week.

will you love me baby when the sun goes down

i say will you love me baby when the sun goes down

or you just a summertime man leaving fo winter comes round.

-Sonia Sanchez

713

sitting in this room
we will chill and listen to
music for good times.

Upon Westminster Bridge

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

-William Wordsworth