Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm.
Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God and loved one another.
Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only possession.
One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit and he came to the younger and said, “It is long that we have lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us divide our possessions.”
Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, “It grieves me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me. But if thou must needs go, so be it,” and he brought the earthen bowl and gave it to him saying, “We cannot divide it, Brother, let it be thine.”
Then the older hermit said, “Charity I will not accept. I will take nothing but mine own. It must be divided.”
And the younger one said, “If the bowl be broken, of what use would it be to thee or to me? If it be thy pleasure let us rather cast a lot.”
But the older hermit said again, “I will have but justice and mine own, and I will not trust justice and mine own to vain chance. The bowl must be divided.”
Then the younger hermit could reason no further and he said, “If it be indeed thy will, and if even so thou wouldst have it let us now break the bowl.”
But the face of the older hermit grew exceedingly dark, and he cried, “O thou cursed coward, thou wouldst not fight.”
No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, Did more for people in this town than l. And all the weak, the halt, the improvident And those who could not pay flocked to me. I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, All wedded, doing well in the world.
(from Henry V, spoken by King Henry) Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility:
(from A Midsummer Night's Dream, spoken by Bottom)
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is “Most fair Pyramus.” Heigh-ho! Peter Quince?
Flute the bellows-mender? Snout the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life, stol'n hence, and left me asleep?
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom. And I will sing it in the latter end of a play before the duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.
The last time I saw Donald Armstrong He was staggering oddly off into the sun, Going down, off the Philippine Islands. I let my shovel fall, and put that hand Above my eyes, and moved some way to one side That his body might pass through the sun,
And I saw how well he was not Standing there on his hands,
Last night I dreamed I ran through the streets of New York Looking for help for you, Nicanor. But my few friends who are rich or influential were temporarily absent from their penthouses or hotel suites. They had gone to the opera, or flown for the weekend to Bermuda. At last I found one or two of them at home, preparing for social engagements, absently smiling, as they tried on gown after gown
Where is the promise of my years; Once written on my brow? Ere errors, agonies and fears Brought with them all that speaks in tears, Ere I had sunk beneath my peers; Where sleeps that promise now?
Naught lingers to redeem those hours, Still, still to memory sweet! The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers Are withered all; and Evil towers Supreme above her sister powers Of Sorrow and Deceit.
There be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean's pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.
All the kids came rumbling down the wood tenement Shaky stairs, sneakers slapping against the worn Tin tread edges, downhall came Pepo, Chino, Cojo, Curly bursting from the door like shells exploding Singing "I'm a Rican Doodle Dandy" and "What shall We be today, Doctors or Junkies, Soldiers or Winos?"
Pepo put a milk crate on a Spanish Harlem johnny pump And drops opened like paratroopers carrying war news.
They have set aside their black tin boxes, scratched and dented, spattered with drops of pink and blue; and their dried-up, rolled-up tubes of alizarin crimson, chrome green, zinc white, and ultramarine; their vials half full of gold powder; stubs of wax pencils;
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honor, or his grace, Or the king's real, or his stampèd face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.
Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill
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