At First She Came To Me Pure

   At first she came to me pure,
dressed only in her innocence;
and I loved her as we love a child.

   Then she began putting on 
clothes she picked up somewhere;
and I hated her, without knowing it.

   She gradually became a queen,
the jewelry was blinding ...
What bitterness and rage!

   ... She started going back towards nakedness.
And I smiled.

   Soon she was back to the single shift
of her old innocence.
I believed in her a second time.

   Then she took off the cloth
and was entirely naked ...
Naked poetry, always mine,
that I have loved my whole life!

by Juan Ramon Jimenez
translated by Robert Bly

Sister

Sister,
what should I have done?

Your laughter
unraveled our Master's Lent.
Your Mongolian eyes
shut out the light

(slits of black stone).


(Where was our Savior?
Is this what older brothers
should be?)

As you rose --
the final arc --
day unveiled 
the balance of God's hand.
Night scurried
into the thicket
of the wicked world.

(What was its name --
oh, Great God?)

You imbued me
with power.
I became a Danite,
son of Manoah,
and faced him
with an ass's bone.
I would not let him grind.
Sister, not this time,
I would not let him cleave.

On the day of rest,
I brought you home
and prayed for you --
your resurrection.
But you were lost,
entombed in clay,
and I was left
with my laments.

Now,
a man,
full of iniquity,
I await your knock.
Sister,
please don't weep.
Day is done,
and twilight is a thousand candles
God burns for you.

The Bones of My Father

1

There are no dry bones

here in this valley. The skull

of my father grins

at the Mississippi moon

from the bottom

of the Tallahatchie,

the bones of my father

are buried in the mud

of these creeks and brooks that twist

and flow their secrets to the sea.

but the wind sings to me

here the sun speaks to me

of the dry bones of my father.

      2

There are no dry bones

in the northern valleys, in the Harlem alleys

young / black / men with knees bent

nod on the stoops of the tenements

and dream

of the dry bones of my father.

And young white longhairs who flee

their homes, and bend their minds

and sing their songs of brotherhood

and no more wars are searching for

my father’s bones.

      3

There are no dry bones here.

We hide from the sun.

No more do we take the long straight strides.

Our steps have been shaped by the cages

that kept us. We glide sideways

like crabs across the sand.

We perch on green lilies, we search

beneath white rocks...

THERE ARE NO DRY BONES HERE

The skull of my father

grins at the Mississippi moon

from the bottom

of the Tallahatchie.

BY ETHERIDGE KNIGHT