Tag Archives: Poetry

They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection (1980) By Julia Esquivel

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A powerful and challenging poem I came across this week.

They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection (1980)
by Julia Esquivel; translated by Ann Woehrle

It isn’t the noise in the streets
that keeps us from resting, my friend,
nor is it the shouts of the young people
coming out drunk from the “St. Pauli,”
nor is it the tumult of those who pass by excitedly
on their way to the mountains.

It is something within us that doesn’t let us sleep,
that doesn’t let us rest,
that won’t stop pounding
deep inside,
it is the silent, warm weeping
of Indian women without their husbands,
it is the sad gaze of the children
fixed somewhere beyond memory,
precious in our eyes
which during sleep,
though closed, keep watch,
systole,
diastole,
awake.

Now six have left us,
and nine in Rabinal,* and two, plus two, plus two,
and ten, a hundred, a thousand,
a whole army
witness to our pain,
our fear,
our courage,
our hope!

Continue reading →

Damage & Too Much and Too Little

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Damage by Wendell Berry

I.

I have a steep wooded hillside that I wanted to be able to pasture occasionally, but it had no water supply.

About halfway to the top of the slop there is a narrow bench, on which I thought I could make a small pond. I hired a man with a bulldozer to dig one. He cleared away trees and then formed the pond, cutting into the hill on the upper side, piling the loosened dirt into a curving earthwork on the lower.

The pond appeared to be a success. Before the bulldozer quit work, water had already begun to seep in. Soon there was enough to support a few head of stock. To heal the exposed ground, i fertilized it and sowed it with grass and clover.

We had an extremely wet fall and winter, with the usual freezing and thawing. The ground grew heavy with water, and soft. The earthwork slumped; a large slice of the woods floor on the upper side slipped down into the pond.

The trouble was a familiar one: too much power, too little knowledge. The fault was mine. Continue reading →

I Heard the Words of Fire

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I heard the words of fire spring forth

from a child (of God);

words that sparked an inferno

and swallowed the whole world.

It was an unintended outcome,

but the devastation surprised no one.

Simple words carry with them,

the power to pick up,

and the power to tear down.

But reality, what you and I spend most

of our time admiring,

can be described only in part

by a tangible word.

Depending, of course,

on how that word is uttered.

But it can be evoked in

surprising ways without

so much as a full sentenced muttered.

To bless and to curse.

The Peace of Wild Things – Wendell Berry

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THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

via The Peace of Wild Things – Poem by Wendell Berry.