Category Archives: Poetry

“next to of course god america i love you…


I can’t seem to find my patriotic speech for this occasion, so I will crib this fine speech:

“next to of course god america i love you

land of the pilgrims’ and so forth

oh say can you see by the dawn’s early

my country ’tis of centuries come and go

and are no more what of it we should worry

in every language even deafanddumb

thy sons acclaim your glorious name

by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum

why talk of beauty what could be more beautiful

than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions

to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think

they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

— e e cummings

 

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

To one who loved not poetry:


Sappho

Sappho, Drexel University, Philadelphia

“THOU liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind

Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind

The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom

Is now to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.”

to one who loved not poetry, Sappho, translated by Edwin Arnold

****************

“I think that in some later Spring,

Echo will bear to men these songs we sing.”

— Sappho, fragment

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