Most read ▸
Sara Teasdale
Rebellion against death, the old rebellion
Is over; I have nothing left to fight;
Battles have always had their meed of music
But peace is quiet as a windless night.
Therefore I make no songs--I have grown certain
Save when he comes too late, death is a friend,
A shepherd leading home his flock serenely
Under the planet at the evening’s end.
My friend just told me he's suicidal-
Not again,
I think as I hold in my tears.
Losing someone is hard,
But losing someone when you know you could have helped
Is like having someone rip out your heart.
He thinks not being alright is bad-
If that's true, I'm living the worst life anyone's ever had.
Of all my friends,
Only two are really okay.
There's the one I tell everything,
And the one I'm still trying to make.
They both know I'm not at my best,
But they still treat me like someone who's fine.
I think it's cause they know being hurt is fine,
And that it's okay not to be okay.
Can I ask you something,
If I'm louder,
Would you hear me,
And not ignore me,
Pay attention, and listen
If I pretend to be someone I'm not,
Will you notice me,
And look at me,
Instead of through me
If I'm bolder,
Will you see me,
Not someone battered and bruised
Just me as I really am,
If I am me,
Will you love me,
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.’
This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn’t be idle to call
I’d summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.
you'll come to this, lovingly rooting
in earth, gently setting to one side
fat worms, watching them
sink from sight with shrugs of their nonexistent
shoulders. As your wrists dry up, caked
in clay, you'll look around you, and
your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your ash and oak,
your three unfurling maples whispering in the breeze,
your white house bracketed in lilacs, breathing
smoke, your woodshed stacked with fir,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,
your pears and apples, your geese in their bright plumes
will bring to you the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.
Assuming that the clouds will come, which now
What she will do today is walk and take in
Hand her apple staff, leaning on it
As she does now, more and yet more
The nearer arriving to a last heart beat
She comes, and check for vegs and berries.
Here are yet more peas; she's not as
Eager for them as three days ago.
With a bit more busy-ness, she'd go
In for blanching those. Onions and
Leeks too small yet; almost out of
Lettuce; tomatoes on the other hand
Doing well, and some ready already.
Oh, she could cut kale, collards or chard
This morning like any late spring morning,
Only she's hungry for something more.
Do what she will, there are yet no pears,
This moth caught in the room tonight
Squirmed up, sniper-style, between
The rusty edges of the screen;
Then, long as the room stayed light,
Lay here, content, in some cornerhole.
Now that we've settled into bed
Though, he can't sleep. Overhead,
He throws himself at the blank wall.
Each night hordes of these flutterers haunt
And climb my study windowpane;
Fired by reflection, their insane
Eyes gleam; they know what they want.
How do the petulant things survive?
Out in the fields they have a place
And proper work, furthering the race;
Why this blind fanatical drive
I followed him
to the red
mountain slope,
there to accept
what only time
could give.
Because you are unworthy,
your value is set.
Because you are doomed,
you are deemed
ready. For no cause, for
nothing you have achieved,
you are eligible. Because
a recent sojourn featured
an unlovely foray into self
(vile reconnaissance),
you loathe yourself: this
is good preparation. Actually,
anything low, honest, sober,
and clear aids alertness.
Everyone and no one is better
than you. Write your name
In Oklahoma and everywhere, despair
only makes life seem more unyielding.
A better tactic is to signify that life
is what it is: If you practice law, fly
a pirate-flag atop your office-building.
If you run a tattoo parlor, arrange for
your phone number to be 435-OUCH.
If you’ve owned a used-book store for
twenty years and are going out of
business, hire a temporary laborer,
and when he announces he’s fixin’
to get sick, tell him, “Use the bathroom.”
When sounds of his retching drive
browsers out, say, “Thanks for coming
in,” and resume the final inventory.
Wait for the man to return from his
I COME to you, blind, hunted creeping things,
I come your way ;
Though I had chosen sun-sweet air and wings
And the blue day.
Now through the clinging darkness I must creep,
Dim citizens, with you my tryst to keep.
I've had my soaring time, my long, light day.
Shall I complain
If for a space I go a heavier way
In bonds and pain ?
The lords of life know neither high nor low,
The heart of man by many a road must go.