Thursday, June 10, 2010

Three Poems


Click here to go to NimbleSpirit to read three poems by Luci Shaw. You'll be glad you did.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Burn ME

"When the regime ordered
Books with dangerous knowledge
To be burned in public and everywhere
Oxen were forced to pull, carts with books
To the bonfires, one of the persecuted poets
Disconcerted, that his books were forgotten.
He rushed to his desk, flying on wings of rage
And wrote a letter to the authorities.
Burn me! He wrote with a quick stroke
Burn me! Don't do this to me! Do not spare me!
Have I not always reported the truth in my books?
Yet now you treat me as were I as a liar!
I command you: Burn me!"

By Bertolt, Brecht

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Who Shall Deliver Me?

Who Shall Deliver Me?

by Christina Georgina Rossetti
(1830-1894)


God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys

Myself, arch-traitor to myself ;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free.