PoetryAmerican Literature2014

The Facebook SonnetWelcome to the endless high-schoolReunion. Welcome to past friendsAnd lovers, however kind or cruel.Let's undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can't we pretendEvery stage of life is the same?Let's exhume, resume and extendChildhood. Let's all play the games

That preoccupy the young. Let fameAnd shame intertwine. Let one's searchFor God become public domain.Let church.com become our church.

Let's sign up, sign in and confessHere at the altar of loneliness.

-Sherman Alexie

Early December in Croton-on-Hudson

Spiked sun. The Hudson’sWhittled down by ice.I hear the bone diceOf blown gravel clicking. Bone-pale, the recent snowFastens like fur to the river.Standstill. We were leaving to deliverChristmas presents when the tire blewLast year. Above the dead valves pines paredDown by a storm stood, limbs bared . . .I want you. -Louise Gluck

The Angelus

Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten musicStill fills the wide expanse,Tingeing the sober twilight of the PresentWith colors of romance:I hear your call, and see the sun descendingOn rock and wave and sand,As down the coast the Mission voices blendingGirdle the heathen land.Within the circle of your incantationNo blight nor mildew falls;Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambitionPasses those airy walls.Borne on the swell of your long waves receding,I touch the farther Past, —I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,The sunset dream and last!Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers,The white Presidio;The swart commander in his leathern jerkin.The priest in stole of snow.Once more I see Portola's cross upliftingAbove the setting sun;And past the headland, northward, slowly driftingThe freighted galleon.O solemn bells! whose consecrated massesRecall the faith of old, —O tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight musicThe

spiritual fold!Your voices break and falter in the darkness, —Break, falter, and are still;And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending.The sun sinks from the hill.

-Bret Harte

Mission San Francisco de Asis

The Presidio

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,Taught my benighted soul to understandThat there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.Some view our sable race with scornful eye,"Their colour is a diabolic die."Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

- Phillis Wheatley

His Excellency General Washington

…Muse! Bow propitious while my pen relatesHow pour her armies through a thousand gates…In bright array they seek the work of war,Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air.Shall I to Washington their praise recite?Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.Thee, first in peace and honors—we demandThe grace and glory of thy martial band. Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,Thy ev'ry action let the Goddess guide.A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine… -Phillis Wheatley

Washington’s ResponseMiss Phillis,Your favour of the 26th of October did not reach my hands ’till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect.I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant Lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyrick, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents. In honour of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the Poem, had I not been apprehensive, that, while I only meant to give the World this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of Vanity. This and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public Prints.If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near Head Quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favoured by the Muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.I am, with great respect, your obedient humble servant,George Washington

The Witch Has Told You a StoryYou are food.You are here for meto eat. Fatten up,and I will like you better.

Your brother will be first,you must wait your turn.Feed him yourself, you willlearn to do it. You will take him

eggs with yellow sauce, muffinstorn apart and leaking butter, fried meatslate in the morning, and always sweetsin a sticky parade from the kitchen.

His vigilance, an ice pick of   hungerpricking his insides, will melt

in the unctuous cream fillings.He will forget. He will thank you

for it. His little finger stuck every daythrough cracks in the barswill grow sleek and round,his hollow face swell

like the moon. He will stop dreamingabout fear in the woods without food.He will lean toward the mawof   the oven as it opens

every afternoon, sighingbetter and better smells.

-Ava Leavell Haymon

The Author to Her BookThou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth didst by my side remain,Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge,Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).At thy return my blushing was not small,My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,I cast thee by as one unfit for light,Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight;Yet being mine own, at length affection wouldThy blemishes amend, if so I could:I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw,

And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet,Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet;In better dress to trim thee was my mind,But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find.In this array ’mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;And take thy way where yet thou art not known,If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none:And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.

-Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

Oh, Could I Raise the Darkened Veil

Oh could I raise the darken’d veil,Which hides my future life from me,Could unborn ages slowly sail,Before my view—and could I seeMy every action painted there,To cast one look I would not dare.There poverty and grief might stand,And dark Despair’s corroding hand,Would make me seek the lonely tombTo slumber in its endless gloom.Then let me never cast a look,Within Fate’s fix’d mysterious book.

-Nathaniel Hawthorne