Time to slow the mind down and listen. Poetry will do the trick. Let the three poets and their poems Lee Ann chose for this week's podcast welcome you into their world (which is YOUR world) and lead you to some beautiful, life-affirming and kick-butt conclusions. Or maybe not even conclusions at all, but entry points for living full and rich days.
The three poems in this episode are Maya Angelou's "A Brave and Startling Truth," Kobayashi Issa's "Cricket" and Naomi Shihab Nye's "Famous." If you'd like, you may follow along as the poems are found below, along with links to the books where they are found.
A Brave and Startling Truth -- Maya Angelou
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Ms. Angelou's poem may be found in her collection, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer.
Cricket -- Kobayashi Issa
On a branch
Floating down river
A cricket, singing.
Jane Hirshfield translated Issa's poem and others in her book, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women.
Famous -- Naomi Shihab Nye
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to the silence,
Which knew it would inherit the earth
Before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
Watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
