Thursday, November 09, 2006
Poems for this new tomorrow
Don’t you hear this hammer ring?
I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
- Langston Hughes, “Big Buddy”
A long time ago
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
That plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and its shelter grow
Until all races and all people know its shade
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW!
HOLD ON!
- Langston Hughes, “Freedom Plow”
I want strong peace, and delight,
the wild good.
I want to make my touch poems:
to find my morning, to find you entire
alive moving among the anti-touch people
- Muriel Rukeyser, “Waking This Morning”
Deep under protest, make.
For we are makers more.
But touching teaching going
the young and the old
they reach they break they are moving
to make the world.
- Muriel Rukeyser, “Breaking Open”
I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
- Langston Hughes, “Big Buddy”
A long time ago
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
That plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and its shelter grow
Until all races and all people know its shade
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW!
HOLD ON!
- Langston Hughes, “Freedom Plow”
I want strong peace, and delight,
the wild good.
I want to make my touch poems:
to find my morning, to find you entire
alive moving among the anti-touch people
- Muriel Rukeyser, “Waking This Morning”
Deep under protest, make.
For we are makers more.
But touching teaching going
the young and the old
they reach they break they are moving
to make the world.
- Muriel Rukeyser, “Breaking Open”
