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Bridge, September 3, 1802 – William Wordsworth Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open
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I watch him set up easel, Both straddling precariously A corner of the twisted, climbing Mountain track A tireless humming-bird, his brush Dips, darts, hovers now here, now there, Where puddles of pigment Bloom in the palette’s wild small garden. The mountains pose for him In a family group Dignified, self-conscious, against the wide blue
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Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest
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The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am
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I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have
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From the west Clouds come hurrying with the wind Turning sharply Here and there Like a plague of locusts Whirling, Tossing up things on its tail Like a madman chasing nothing. Pregnant clouds Ride stately on its back, Gathering to perch on hills Like sinister dark wings; The wind whistles by And trees bend to
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Once upon a time, son, they used to laugh with their hearts and laugh with their eyes: but now they only laugh with their teeth, while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow. There was a time indeed they used to shake hands with their hearts: but that’s gone, son. Now they shake hands without
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Cruising at thirty thousand feet above the endless green the islands seem like dice tossed on a casino’s baize, some come up lucky, others not. Puerto Rico takes the pot, the Dallas of the West Indies, silver linings on the clouds as we descend are hall-marked, San Juan glitters like a maverick’s gold ring. All
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Kamau Brathwaite But today I recapture the islands’ bright beaches: blue mist from the ocean rolling into the fishermen’s houses. By these shores I was born: sound of the sea came in at my window, life heaved and breathed in me then with the strength of that turbulent soil. Since then I have travelled: moved
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Stewart Brown Proudly wearing the rosette of my skin I strut into Sabina England boycotting excitement bravely something badly amiss. Cricket. Not the game they play at Lords, The crowd- whoever saw a crowd At a cricket match? – are caged vociferous partisans, quick to take offence. England sixty eight for none at lunch. ‘What
