Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday –

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Chile, Literature, Nobel Prize, Pablo Neruda, Poem, Poet, Poetry, Wednesday, wisdom

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.

Pablo Neruda

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn’t play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.

Pablo Neruda

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

Pablo Neruda

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

Pablo Neruda

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

Pablo Neruda

If you guessed that Pablo Neruda was a poet, you’d be right. In fact, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Check out is Wikipedia page to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda

Happy Wednesday folks! The weekend is almost here. Have a terrific day!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Bonus Content – Poem

Tags

Black History Month, Frederick Douglass, Poem, Poetry, Poetry Foundation, Robert Hayden, The Oatmeal, The Onion

Frederick Douglass 

BY 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 the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Poetry Credit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46460/frederick-douglass?mc_cid=b11dc58d34&mc_eid=259b02d0f8

I wanted to post one more thing during Black History Month. This is a poem about Frederick Douglass. Since the month ends on March 1, this will be my last opportunity to get another individual associated with abolition or the civil rights movement. Next year, I may forego my normal schedule so I can get a profile or poetry or something for each day of the month. We’ll see.

In the meantime, have a great weekend! I realize some of you may be missing my Funny Friday posts, but you can tickle your funny bone on two sites I frequent often. Here they are:

The Oatmeal: https://theoatmeal.com/ Funny Comics and Stories

The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/ News Satire

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful/Thinking Thursday – Audre Lorde

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Activist, Art, Audre Lorde, Black History Month, Civil Rights Movement, Discrimination, Gay Rights Movement, Google, Poem, Poet, Poetry Foundation, Prejudice

Photo Credit: Audre Lorde. Photograph by Elsa Dorfman.

Today’s thinking Thursday is about another African American icon. This one is a poet called Audre Lorde. Much of her work throughout her life was dedicated to fighting discrimination be it racial, homophobic, ethnic, or whatever. I’ve included a poem from the Poetry Foundation below for you to read if you are interested. Google highlighted her today. This is where I got the inspiration to write today’s posting. After the poem, I’ve included the link for her biography on Poetry Foundation and a link to her Wikipedia page. I hope you enjoy reading about her.

Sisters in Arms

BY AUDRE LORDE

The edge of our bed was a wide grid
where your fifteen-year-old daughter was hanging   
gut-sprung on police wheels
a cablegram nailed to the wood
next to a map of the Western Reserve
I could not return with you to bury the body   
reconstruct your nightly cardboards
against the seeping Transvaal cold
I could not plant the other limpet mine
against a wall at the railroad station
nor carry either of your souls back from the river   
in a calabash upon my head
so I bought you a ticket to Durban
on my American Express
and we lay together
in the first light of a new season.

Now clearing roughage from my autumn garden   
cow sorrel    overgrown rocket gone to seed   
I reach for the taste of today
the New York Times finally mentions your country   
a half-page story
of the first white south african killed in the “unrest”
Not of Black children massacred at Sebokeng   
six-year-olds imprisoned for threatening the state   
not of Thabo Sibeko, first grader, in his own blood   
on his grandmother’s parlor floor
Joyce, nine, trying to crawl to him
shitting through her navel
not of a three-week-old infant, nameless   
lost under the burned beds of Tembisa
my hand comes down like a brown vise over the marigolds   
reckless through despair
we were two Black women touching our flame   
and we left our dead behind us
I hovered    you rose    the last ritual of healing   
“It is spring,” you whispered
“I sold the ticket for guns and sulfa   
I leave for home tomorrow”
and wherever I touch you
I lick cold from my fingers
taste rage
like salt from the lips of a woman   
who has killed too often to forget   
and carries each death in her eyes   
your mouth a parting orchid   
“Someday you will come to my country   
and we will fight side by side?”

Keys jingle in the door ajar    threatening   
whatever is coming belongs here
I reach for your sweetness
but silence explodes like a pregnant belly   
into my face
a vomit of nevers.

Mmanthatisi turns away from the cloth
her daughters-in-law are dyeing
the baby drools milk from her breast
she hands him half-asleep to his sister
dresses again for war   
knowing the men will follow.
In the intricate Maseru twilights
quick    sad    vital
she maps the next day’s battle
dreams of Durban    sometimes
visions the deep wry song of beach pebbles
running after the sea.

Notes:

M-mán-tha-tisi: warrior queen and leader of the Tlokwa (Sotho) people during the mfecane (crushing), one of the greatest crises in southern African history. The Sotho now live in the Orange Free State, S. A.

Má-se-ru: scene of a great Tlokwa battle and now the capital of Lesotho

Durban: Indian Ocean seaport and resort area in Natal Province, S. A.Audre Lorde, “Sisters in Arms” from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. Copyright © 1997 by Audre Lorde. Reprinted with the permission of Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., http://www.nortonpoets.com.Source: The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lorde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde

This is yet another inspiring woman. I hope you enjoy these links. I did.

Until next time…

Dave