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Children of Light

Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redmen's bones;
Embarking from the Nether Land of Holland,
Pilgrims unhouseled by Geneva's night,
They planted here the Serpent's seeds of light;
And here the pivoting searchlights probe to shock
The riotous glass houses built on rock,
And candles gutter by an empty altar,
And light is where the landless blood of Cain
Is burning, burning the unburied grain.

poem by Robert Lowell
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He strained my faith

497

He strained my faith—
Did he find it supple?
Shook my strong trust—
Did it then—yield?

Hurled my belief—
But—did he shatter—it?
Racked—with suspense—
Not a nerve failed!

Wrung me—with Anguish—
But I never doubted him—
'Tho' for what wrong
He did never say—

Stabbed—while I sued
His sweet forgiveness—
Jesus—it's your little "John"!

[...] Read more

poem by Emily Dickinson
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Weary In Well-Doing

I would have gone; God bade me stay:
I would have worked; God bade me rest.
He broke my will from day to day,
He read my yearnings unexpressed
And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go:
Now I would rest; God bids me work.
He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,
My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk
And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;
Day after day I plod and moil:
But, Christ my God, when will it be
That I may let alone my toil
And rest with Thee?

poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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Cross-Roads

The rain beat in our faces,
And shrill the wild airs grew;
The long-maned clouds in races
Coursed o'er heaven's windy blue.

The tortured trees were lashing
Each other in their wrath,
Their wet leaves wildly dashing
Across the forest path.

We did not heed the sweeping
Of storm-bewildered rain;
Our cheeks were wet with weeping,
Our hearts were wrung with pain.

For where the cross-roads sever,
Parting to East and West,
We bade good-bye for ever,
To what we each loved best.

poem by Mathilde Blind
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I heard a fly buzz when I died;

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,--and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

poem by Emily Dickinson
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Dying (I heard a fly buzz when I died)

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, -- and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

poem by Emily Dickinson
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The Evening of the Year

Wan mists enwrap the still-born day;
The harebell withers on the heath;
And all the moorland seems to breathe
The hectic beauty of decay.
Within the open grave of May
Dishevelled trees drop wreath on wreath;
Wind-wrung and ravelled underneath
Waste leaves choke up the woodland way.

The grief of many partings near
Wails like an echo in the wind:
The days of love lie far behind,
The days of loss lie shuddering near.
Life's morning-glory who shall bind?
It is the evening of the year.

poem by Mathilde Blind
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I Wrung My Hands

I wrung my hands under my dark veil. . .
"Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?"
-- Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate. . .
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: "I meant it all
in fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain."
He smiled at me -- oh so calmly, terribly --
and said: "Why don't you get out of the rain?"

poem by Anna Akhmatova
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This Way Of Life

Lying has become when we're moving or speaking,
because us puppets have been peeping,
with our own hands up our own backs,
we've been reading over shadow's shoulder sleeping,
and now we mock the motive, not the act.

There's no point to this pile of slight,
no right in we wee isles wrung dry and tight,
top heavy and sinking beneath,
nothing to inherit nor bequeath;

all of these positions we assume,
lie comfortably between me and you,
we've settled into this way of life,
which honesty could easily refute.

poem by Tyler Madden
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The Light Made Of Stone

There in the Spring causality struck
There in the virgin glory
Fumbling rains masked the sun
Until the vessels emptied
This summers dog-days, infernal fray
Slow and abounding in whispers
What can I learn, for what I yearned
Drove itself towards these dunes

Telling the winds I was a storm
Whose clouds have dissipated
In the cool eve, you've scolded the Spring
And taught me discrimination
Your tongue wrung like the sluggish sun
Unveiling those secret wounds
Yet Autumn is here, in some humble seed
To save me from your pelting glory.

poem by Derrick Puente
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