Edwin Muir: The Horses
Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence
Chard deNiord: What Can Anyone Say
In memory of the Ukrainian children, parents, and civilians who have been murdered by Russian troops and Prime Minister Putin during Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine
Carolyn Holmes Gregory: The Body
You know you are not in charge
of your body any more
despite its joyous odes
and incantations.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: This Worn-Out Hospital Gown
like all the other women survivors,
me, walking free from the monster.
Lex Runciman: News from Kyev
…bombs
explode in streets, on rooftops, through windows,
doorways. Statues have toppled.
Gary Fincke: After War News
The moon, lately, was a celebrity, full
and a few miles closer than usual, enough
to bring three neighbors outside near midnight.
Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
Richard Wilbur: Advice to a Prophet
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons…
Video: Bill Moyers Interviews Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity (2013)
Wendell Berry, a quiet and humble man, has become an outspoken advocate for revolution. He urges immediate action as he mourns how America has turned its back on the land and rejected Jeffersonian principles of respect for the environment and sustainable agriculture.
Michael Simms: No
No is not nothing. When everything has been taken from you, no is all you have left.
Michael Simms: Brotherly Love
we’re afraid to look deprivation
in the eye, resent admitting our own dumb luck
Wendy Mnookin: In the Small Rotary
where Route 100 meets School Street,
two cows graze.
Robin Davidson: Mrs. Schmetterling Considers the Beautiful
When she closes her eyes, she sees the room’s ceiling
fill first with billowing shadows, then a pinpoint of
light that blooms into a blue-black shining, then
the brilliant blue of coronal plasma that could
be the widening eye of God.
