Thunder by Elizabeth Bishop

And suddenly the giants tired of play.--

With huge, rough hands they flung the gods' gold balls

And silver harps and mirrors at the walls

Of Heaven, and trod, ashamed, where lay

The loveliness of flowers. Frightened Day

On white feet ran from out the temple halls,

The blundering dark was filled with great war-calls,

And Beauty, shamed, slunk silently away.

Be quiet, little wind among the leaves

That turn pale faces to the coming storm.

Be quiet, little foxes in your lairs,

And birds and mice be still--a giant grieves

For his forgotten might. Hark now the warm

And heavy stumbling down the leaden stairs!

1928

daffodils

William Wordsworth

Daffodils

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,	5
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:	10
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,	15
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,	20
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

childhood's end

. . . the Total Breakthrough generation is born on Earth and as mere infants they show powers of mind far beyond their parents' and they go off into a colony by themselves, not as individuals, however, but as one great colonial being, in the biological sense of the colonial animal, until, at last, the Earth, its mission complete, convulses, starts coming apart, and they, the children: "Something's starting to happen. The stars are becoming dimmer. It's as if a great cloud is coming up, very swiftly, all over over all the sky. But it isn't really a cloud. It seems to have some sort of structure---I can glimpse a hazy network of lines and bands that keep changing their position. It's almost as if it were alive... There's a great burning column, like a tree of fire, reaching above the western horizon. It's a long way off right around the world. I know where it springs form: they're on their way at last, to become a part of the Overmind. Their probation is ended: theyre leaving the last remnants of matter behind... The whole landscape is lit up---it's brighter than day---reds and golds and greens are chasing each other across the sky---oh, it's beyond words, it doesn't seem fair that I'm the only one to see it---I never thought such colors---"

Prayer

Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.

-Galway Kinnell

31

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have

one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor

a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but

it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose

tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her

silent)

with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which

is a flower and not a face with

hands

which whisper

This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

in the mashed banana sunlight of Labor Day morning

"Amanda's mouth eased into a long slow smile. Her eyes grew as bright as violet silk. "Yes. Yes," she muttered. "The monarch." She stared at Ziller. He at her. They modified each other by their looking. Something almost angelic danced on the abrasive surfaces of his face. She carried her excitement lightly, the way a hunter carries a loaded shotgun over a fence. Warm chemical yokes burst in their throats. Ziller had the stink of Pan about him. Amanda heard the phone ring in her womb. In the magnetized space between them, they flew their thoughts like kites. At last he reached out for her. She took his hand. As they disappeared far down the riverbank, the ringmaster and the Apache sat stunned, in the kind of vacuum that forms in the immediate wake of an historic turn."

--Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins

Nude Interrogation, Yusef Komunyakaa, 1998.

Did you kill anyone over there? Angelica shifts her gaze from the Janis Joplin poster to the Jimi Hendrix, lifting the pale muslin blouse over her head. The blacklight deepens the blues when the needle drops into the first groove of "All Along the Watchtower." I don't want to look at the floor. Did you kill anyone? Did you dig a hole, crawl inside, and wait for your target? Her miniskirt drops into a rainbow at her feet. Sandalwood incense hangs a slow comet of perfume over the room. I shake my head. She unhooks her bra and flings it against a bookcase made of plywood and cinderblocks. Did you use an M-16, a hand-grenade, a bayonet, or your own two strong hands, both thumbs pressed against that little bird in the throat? She stands with her left thumb hooked into the elastic of her sky-blue panties. When she flicks off the blacklight, snowy hills rush up to the windows. Did you kill anyone over there? Are you right-handed or left-handed? Did you drop your gun afterwards? Did you kneel beside the corpse and turn it over? She's nude against the falling snow. Yes. The record spins like a bull's-eye on the far wall of Xanadu. Yes, I say. I was scared of the silence. The night was too big. And afterwards, I couldn't stop looking up at the sky.