Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SAVING WAY, by HAYDEN CARRUTH Poet's Biography First Line: When the little girl was told that the sun someday Last Line: To invent our lives from these rich hours of woe? Subject(s): Dramatists; Girls; Jews; Plays & Playwrights ; Poetry & Poets; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Judaism; Dramatists | ||||||||
When the little girl was told that the sun someday, In a billion years or a trillion, will burn out dead, She sobbed in a fierce and ancient way And stamped and shook her head Till the brown curls flew; and I wondered how, Given the world, given her place and time, She should ever come in her own right mind to know That it all may happen one day before her prime, The lights go out in one crude burst Or slowly, winking across the cold, The last and worst That the old time's craziest prophet had foretold; And I wondered also how she shall come to find The town whose monuments Are the rusty barbed wire rattling in the wind And the shredding tents And the street where the bodies crawl Forever and ever, our broken dead Who arise again, and again and always fall For a word that someone said, Or how she shall seek the plundered isles Adrift on the smoking seas, Or the desert bloodied for miles and miles, Or the privacies Of Jews laid out in a snowy woods, Black men laid in the swamp, All in their sorrowing attitudes Of inquiry; or how when the wind is damp She shall come someday to the marble square Where papers blow and her father stands In idle discourse with a millionaire Who will rape her later on with his own hands; And I wondered finally how all this Will be anything to secure What she knows now in her child's instinct is The sole world, immensely precious and impure. My dear, will you learn the saving way? And then can we go, In keen joy like Lear and like Cordelia gay, To invent our lives from these great days of woe? Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our poem explanations - click here!Other Poems of Interest...ENDING WITH A LINE FROM LEAR by MARVIN BELL ENDING WITH A LINE FROM LEAR by MARVIN BELL SOUNDS OF THE RESURRECTED DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS (#20): 1. SHAKESPEARE by MARVIN BELL SOUNDS OF THE RESURRECTED DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS (#20): 1. SHAKESPEARE by MARVIN BELL SOUNDS OF THE RESURRECTED DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS (#20): 2. SHAKESPEARE by MARVIN BELL SOUNDS OF THE RESURRECTED DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS (#20): 2. SHAKESPEARE by MARVIN BELL YOUR SHAKESPEARE by MARVIN BELL YOUR SHAKESPEARE by MARVIN BELL I'VE NEVER SEEN SUCH A REAL HARD TIME BEFORE' by HAYDEN CARRUTH |
|