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POETRY NIGHT

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From “Song of Myself” From the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition THE SWINGSET Sometimes

 

From “Song of Myself”

Walt Whitman

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab

and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

 

 

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From the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition

Walt Whitman

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy,

devote your income and labor to others,

hate tyrants,

argue not concerning God,

have patience and indulgence toward the people,

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,

or to any man or number of men,

go freely with powerful uneducated persons,

and with the young, and with the mothers of families,

read these leaves in the open air

every season of every year of your life

re-examine all you have been told

at school or church or in any book,

dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

 

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THE SWINGSET

By Grace Walton

a seventh-grader

 

 

Wood rots,

ropes fray,

metal rusts

 

memories stay.

 

It stands there

deserted in the midst

of many times climbed

and swung from.

 

Sometimes it was a ship

escaping from the storm.

Other times, many times,

it was the convertible a friend and I

drove to McDonald’s.

 

Now years of playing cease.

It’s just the goal for flashlight tag,

where people sulk after losing

or

preen after winning.

 

At times I want to shed

my childhood,

but somehow I can’t cart it away

to the dump, where

swingsets are shredded, where

times past

can’t ever

return.

 

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Sometimes

Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.

Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.