Poetry


The Mother
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
From A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks, published by Harper & Brothers. © 1945 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Used with permission. All rights reserved

Alone
by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Destiny
by Rosario Castellanos

Destiny
We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive.
No one else is close. What is forgotten,
What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath
Through someone else’s lung!
There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold
Both our bodies
And our ration of hope is small
And pain cannot be shared.
Man is an animal of solitudes,
A deer that bleeds as it flees
With an arrow in its side.
Ah, but hatred with its insomniac
Glass eyes; its attitude
Of menace and repose.
The deer goes to drink and a tiger
Is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes
-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)
his enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.

Monday, October 29, 2007

The Dark Side of Man

I feel that the poems are all connected in that they all show a dark, ugly side of humans. In the Brooks poem, we see the shame and guilt felt by a mother who aborted her unborn child. She communicates the sadness and helplessness that I imagine every woman who has an abortion must feel. I know that I I ever had an abortion I would never stop wondering what great things that child would grow up to do. My favorite line is "If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate." I can feel her desperation when she was getting the abortion. She was probably very young and scared and felt that there was no other choice. This poem has such a sadness and genuine emotion about it. I really dig it. The poem by Ms. Angelou highlights the deteriorating condition of this world and the people in it. The loneliness and the self centered attitudes of everyone. But she is also sending out the message that "nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone." The singular attitude that many people possess may not hold them back from having monetary gain, but it won't save your soul. As with the example of the millionaire. He has all his riches but his family is falling apart. He doesnt even care enough to fix it. This is so true in today's world. Hollywood showcases many of these dysfunctional families. We should heed the message she sends out. Everybody needs somebody sometimes. This poem is deep. The last poem, by Rosario Castellanos, I believe, illustrates our inner evil. It shows that feelings of hatred are far stronger than feelings of love. There is a saying that we always hurt the ones we love. I'm not sure but I think the part of the poem about drawing breath from someone else's lungs exemplifies this. We always want to lean on our loved ones and expect them to save us. This ties in with the Angelou poem as far as that selfish attitude. On the other hand, when we dwell on hatred, we are only allowing it to grow. We become fixated on it and allow it to devour us. I love the analogy of the deer seeing the reflection of the tiger in the water as he drinks. I dont know if he sees the reflection behind him or if he sees it instead of his own reflection. I like to think its the latter because when you harbor hatred for you enemy, after a while you become the very thing you hate most. And by giving in to hatred, you are becoming its accomplice. All of the poems were very interesting and informative. I just hope I'm not completely off with these analyses.
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