What did my hands do before they held you?

~ Sylvia Plath

Walt Whitman

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;

I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;

I see the wife misused by her husband-I see the treacherous seducer of young women;

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid-I see these sights on the earth;

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny- I see martyrs and prisoners;

I observe a famine at sea-I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers,
the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these-All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent!

Margaret Atwood

Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer

i
He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper
proclaiming himself the centre
with no walls, no borders
anywhere; the sky no height
above him, totally un-enclosed
and shouted:
Let me out!

ii
He dug the soil in rows,
imposed himself with shovels
He asserted in to the furrows,
I am not random
The ground
replied with aphorisms:
a tree-sprout,
a nameless weed,
words he couldn't understand.

iii
The house pitched
the plot staked
in the middle of nowhere
At night the mind inside,
in the middle of nowhere
The idea of an animal
patters across the roof
In the darkness the fields
defend themselves with fences in vain:
everything is getting in

iv
By daylight he resisted.
He said, disgusted
with the swamp's clamourings
and the outbursts of rocks.
This is not order
but the absence of order.
He was wrong, the unanswering
forest implied:
It was an ordered absence

v
For many years he fished for a great vision,
dangling the hooks of sown roots
under the surface of the shallow earth.
It was like enticing whales with a bentpin.
Besides he thought in that country
only the worms were biting

vi
If he had known unstructured space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-boat
with all the animals,
even the wolves
he might have floated.
But obstinate he stated,
The land is solid and stamped
watching his foot sink down through stone
up to the knee.

vii
Things refused to name themselves;
refused to let him name them.
The wolves hunted outside.
On his beaches, his clearings,
by the surf of under-growth
breaking at his feet,
he foresaw disintegration
and in the end through eyes
made ragged by his effort,
the tension
between subject and object,
the green vision,
the unnamed whale
invaded!

Paul Celan

There Was Earth

There was Earth in them,

and they dug.
They dug and they dug,

and so their Day went by, and their Night.

And they did not praise God,
who, so they heard, wanted all this,
who, so they heard, knew of all this.

They dug and they heard nothing more;
did not grow wise, invented no Song,
thought up for themselves no Language.
They dug.

There came a Silence, there came a Storm,
There came every Ocean.
I dig, you dig, and it digs, the Worm,
and the Singing, there, says: They dig.

O someone, o none, o no one, o you:
Where did it lead to, that nowhere-leading?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you,
and on our finger awakens the Ring.

How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving?

~John Lennon, 'How?'

Alice in Wonderland!

All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out —
And now our tale is done
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.
Alice! a childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.''What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!''I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see.''I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.
'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, 'for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'

'You are old Father William,' the young man said,'And your hair has become very white;And yet you incessantly stand on your head —Do you think at your age it is right?'

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?''That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,''I don't know where. . .''Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. 'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.''But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.''How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice'You must be' said the Cat 'or you wouldn't have come here'

'You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; 'it's very rude.'The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?''Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. 'I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. — I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.'Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.'Exactly so,' said Alice.'Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.'I do,' Alice hastily replied; 'at least — at least I mean what I say — that's the same thing, you know.''Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. 'You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!''You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, 'that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!''You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!''It is the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin."I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried."Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly...." Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

'I could tell you my adventures — beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.''Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle.'No, no! The adventures first,' said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: 'explanations take such a dreadful time.'
'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?''Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

He sent them word I had not gone

(We know it to be true):

If she should push the matter on,

What would become of you?

My notion was that you had been

(Before she had this fit)

An obstacle that came between

Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know she liked them best,

For this must ever be

A secret, kept from all the rest,

Between yourself and me.

Czeslaw Milosz

We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons

But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one

Considered himself as a lost man.

There was a time when only wise books were read

helping us to bear our pain and misery.

This, after all, is not quite the same

as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be

and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesnt matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesnt always understand.