32 Songsof Ourselves

26

Sonnet 18

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Shall Icompare thee to a summer'sday?

Thouart more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed.
But thy eternal súmmer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

temperate] moderate, evenlytempered

lease] terms of a tenancy agreement
the eye of heaven] the sun
every fair) all that is beautiful
untrimmned| 1) strippedof decoration; (2) thrOWn off balance
ow'st p0ssess, own
shade darkness, shadow
this] thiS poem
 Song: LoveArned

APHRABEHN

triumphsat.
fantastic around him flowed.
Loveinbleeding hearts did create.
Whilst fresh pains he showed
For
whom power he
tyrannic his fire
And strange he took
thy brighteyes sport he hurled:
From about in desire.
Which round took
he
from mineamorous world.
But 'twas
the
Enough to undo
sighs and tears.
took his
From me he pride and cruelty:
From thee hislanguishments and fears.
Fromme his dart from
thee.
killing
And every the god have armed.
Thus thouand I deity;
And set him up a alone is harmed,
heart
But my poor victor is, and free.
Whilst thine the

fantastic] (1)extravagant; (2) imagined

undo] destroy, utterly ruin
languishments] fits of misery
 Songs of urseves 69

51

AMarried State

KATHERINE PHILIPS
A
married state
The best of affords but little ease:
husbands are so hard to please:
This in wives'
careful faces
Though they dissemble theiryou may spell.
A virgin state is
crowned with
misfortunes well.
It'salways happy as it's much content.
No blustering husbands toinnocent:
Nopangs of childbirth to create your fears.
No children's cries for to extort your tears,
offend your ears.
Few worldly crosses to distract your
Thus are you freed from all the caresprayers.
that do
Attend on matrimony, and a husband too.
Therefore, Madam, be advised by me:
Turn, turn apostate to love' s levity.
Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel,
There's no such thing as leading apes in hell.

careful] full of care

spell]observe
extort)extractforcibly
crOsses] troubles
apostate] religious traitor
Icading apes in hell] the proverbial fate of spinsters
4 Sons ofunelves

64

The Chimney-Sweeper

WILLIAM BLAKE

Alitle black thing among the snow,

Crying 'weep, 'weep, in notes of woe!
Where are thy father and mother, say?
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

"Because Iwas happy upon the heath

And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

'And because I am happy and dance and sing.

They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Whomake up aheaven of our misery."
 12 Songs of Ourselves
74

Man
Essayon
FromAn
ALEXANDERPOPE

God toscan:
presume not
Know then
thyself.
mankind is man.
proper study of
ofa middle state,
The isthmus great:
Placedon this wise, and rudely
darkly the sceptic side
Abeing knowledge for pride.
With too much weakness for the stoic's rest,
With too much in doubt to act or
between; beast,
He hangs himselfa god or
deem
In doubt to or body to prefer,
mind
In doubt his and reasoning but to err;
Born but to die, such,
ignorance, his reason much:
Alike in toolittle or too
Whether he thinks
thought and passion, all confused:
Chaos of disabused;
himself abused or
Stillby half to fall,
Created half to rise and
prey to all;
Great lord of all things, yet a error hurled:
endless
Sole judge of truth, in world!
of the
The glory, jest, and riddle

scan) measure, contemplate

isthmus] a strip of land connecting two land-masses over the sea
sceptic] doubttul of the validity of human knowledge
stoic] one who suppresses emotion at life's disappointments
120 Songs of Ourselves

78

Carpet-weavers, Morocco

CAROL RUMENS

loom of another world.

The children are at the their dresses bright.
and black,
Their braids are oiled would make a melodious chime.
Their assorted heights
their flickering knots like television:raised.
They watch grows, the bench willbe
As thegarden of Islam
they willlace the dark-rose veins of the tree-tops.
Then
merchant's truck.
The carpet will travel in the
the mosque.
It willbe spread by the servantsof
prayer.
Deep and soft, it willgive when heaped with
The children are hard at work in the school of days.
From their fingers the co<oursof all-that-will-be fly
and freeze into the frame of all-that-was.

garden of Islam] i.e. the carpet's abstract pattern

 Songs of Oursel ves 127

83

Before the Sun

CHARLES MUNGOSHI

Intense blue morning

promising early heat
and later in the afternoon,
heavy rain.

The bright chips

fly from the sharp axe
for some distance through the air,
arc,
and eternities later,
settle down in showers
on the dewy grass.

It is a big log:
but when you are fourteen
big logs
are what you want.

The wood gives off

a sweet nose-cleansing odour
which (unlike sawdust)
doesn't make one sneeze.

It sends up a thin spiral

of smoke which later straightens
and flutes out
to the distant sky: a signal
of some sort,
or asacrificial prayer.

The wood hisses,

The sparks fly.
128 Songs of Ourselves
Andwhen the sun
finally shows up
some
in the East like
latecomer to a feast
cobs of maize
Ihave got two
ready for it.

share
Itell the sun to come
with me the roastedmaize
and the sun just winks
like a grown-up.

So Igo ahead, taking big

alternate bites:
one for the sun,
one for me.
This one for the sun,
this one for me:
tillthe cobs
are just two little skeletons
in the sun.
134 Songs of Ourselves

88

Storyteller

LIZ LOCHHEAD

she sat down

table
at the scoured
in the swept kitchen its cracked delft.
beside the dresser with
daylight was salted away.
And every last crumb of
were useless
No one could say the stories
for as the tongue clacked
five or forty fingers stitched
cornwas grated from the husk
patchwork was pieced
or the darning done.

Never the one to slander her shiftless.

Daily sloven or spotless no matter whether
dishwater or tasty was her soup.
To tell the stories was her work.
It was like spinning,
gathering thin air to the singlest strongest
thread. Night in
she'd have us waiting, held
breath, for the ending we knew by heart.
And at first light
as the women stirred themselves to build the fire
the peasant's feet felt for clogs

dresser] kitchen shelves displaying dishes

delft)old earthenware
salted away] scrupulously stored
 Songs of Ourselves 13:
as thin grey washed over flat fields
the stories dissolved in the whorl of the ear
but they
hung themselves upside down
in the sleeping heads of the
children
tillthey flew again
in the storytellers night.

whorl] coiled form

I50 Songs of Ourselves

101

Lament

GILLIAN CLARKE

For thegreen turtle with her pulsing burden,

in search of the breeding-ground.
For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness.

For the cormorant in his funeral silk,

the veil of iridescence on the sand,
the shadow on the sea.

For the ocean's lap with its mortal stain.

For Ahmed at the closed border.
For the soldier in his uniform of fire.

For the gunsmith and the armourer,

the boy fusilier who joined for the company,
the farmer's sons, in it for the music.

For the hook-beaked turtles,

the dugong and the dolphin,
the whale struck dumb by the missile's thunder.

For the tern, the gulland the restless

wader,
the long migrations and the slow dying.
the veiled sun and the stink of
anger.
For the burnt earth and the sun
the scalded ocean and the put out,
For vengeance, and theashesblazing well.
of language.
Cormorant tern
gull... wader] types of
iridescence] a surface of shimmering colours seabirds
fusilier rifleman
dugong| large aquatic mammal
 Songs of Ourselves

104

Report To Wordsworth

BOEY KIM CHENG

Youshould be here, Nature has need of you.

She has been laid waste. Smothered by the
the flowers are mute, and the birds are few
smog.
in a sky slowing like a dying clock.
Allhopes of Proteus rising from the sea
have sunk; he is entombed in the waste
wedump. Triton's notes struggle to be free,
his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,
and Neptune lies helpless as a beached whale,
while insatiate man moves in for the kill.
Poetry and piety have begun to fail,
as Nature's mighty heart is lying still.
Osee the wound widening in the sky,
God is labouring to utter his last cry.

Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Wordsworth] ie. the English nature-poetWilliam
Proteus] (Greek mythology) a shape-changing sea-god
(Greek mythology) a sea-god that used shells as wind instruments
Iriton]
Neptune] the Roman god of the sea
Insatiatel never satisfied
 Songs of Ourselves 161

110

A Different History

SUJATA BHATT

Great Pan is not dead:

he simply emigrated
to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys:
every tree issacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book.
It is a sin to shove a book aside
with your foot,
asin to slam booksdown
hard on a table,
a sin to toss one carelessly
acrosS a room.

You must learn how to turn the pages gently

without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.
Which language
has not been the oppressor's tongue?
Which language
someone?
truly meant to murder
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with a long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror's face
the unborn grandchildren
language.
grow to love that strange
nature, part-nman, part- goat
Pan] the Ancient Greek god of
Sarasvatilthe Hindugoddess of the arts
 pace. trail food
grace
season's by. scale.
a thegrass; pass. stood gone
half-through small
Snake
Hunting sky
reeling
on diamond intent,
went.
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WRIGHT
JUDITH partinghim
flickering we
gentlest what
went watch as he he of
114 fierce as
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Sun-warmed he went each
walked, Head-down,
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the great living dark a at
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Songs
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I66
Songs
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go. crime
- to
rings, wings
crooked
door, where
pace, trace
floor. shelf vicious
time. know,
myself.
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118 that jog to mild climbedfor to?
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of winter
spring,
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circle
paint.
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BREWSTER
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like squares factories comeof burned-out Spring
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122 mountains, Where
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which
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People
of the also crowded woodenclucking
the doorfrosty
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hints the nature
how a
with
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or or art or are A a
Ourselves
of
Songs
176
215
Ourselves
of
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strung tongue.
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breaking. ground, falling, away.
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sailfurrow.
clicking pluck polished plough, arm.
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