1083. Frederick Douglass - Robert Hayden

.

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,

usable as earth, when it belongs at last to all,

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians;

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,

this man, superb in love and logic, this man

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with loves grown out of his life, the loves

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

1082. What Kind of Times Are These - Adrienne Rich

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There’s a place between two stands of trees whee the grass grows

  uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled,

this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light —

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it’s necessary

to talk about trees.

1081. Vegetarian Physics - David Clewell

.

The tofu that’s shown up overnight in this house is frightening.

proof of the Law of Conservation: matter that simply cannot be

created or destroyed. Matter older than Newton,

who knew better than to taste it. Older than Lao-tzu,

who thought about it but finally chose harmonious non-interference.

I’d like to be philosophical too, see it as one kind of pale

inscrutable wisdom among the hot dogs, the cold chicken,

the leftover deviled eggs, but I’m talking curled

soybean milk. And I don’t have that kind of energy.

I’d rather not be part of the precariously metaphorical

wedding of modern physics and the ancient Eastern mysteries.

But still: whoever stashed the tofu in my Frigidaire

had better come back for it soon, I’m not Einstein

but I’m smart enough to know a bad idea when I see it

taking up space, biding its time.

Like so much that demands our imperfect attention

amid the particle roar of the world, going nowhere, fast.