Fathers Poems

In life
one is always
balancing
...

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,
...

Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war,
Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb;
Th' Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands,
And casts them out upon the darken'd earth!
...

we've ignored eachother for a long time
and I'm strictly an indoor man
anytime to call would be the wrong time
I'll avoid you as long as I can
...

at the track today,
Father's Day,
each paid admission was
entitled to a wallet
...

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
...

The war will change many things in art and life, and among them, it is to be hoped, many of our own ideas as to what is, and what is not, "intellectual."

Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea,
Whose footsteps are not known,
...

Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
...

Old fathers, great-grandfathers,
Rise as kindred should.
If ever lover's loneliness
Came where you stood,
...

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
...

Once I saw some boys
Outside a gate
They had come to school
But they were very late
...

Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
...

All that I owe the fellows of the grave
And all the dead bequeathed from pale estates
Lies in the fortuned bone, the flask of blood,
Like senna stirs along the ravaged roots.
...

Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redmen's bones;
Embarking from the Nether Land of Holland,
Pilgrims unhouseled by Geneva's night,
...

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
...

The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
...

On Hellespont, guilty of true-love's blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
...

My friends without shields walk on the target

It is late the windows are breaking
...

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead) , grand-
fathers (both dead) , brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd) , nieces, and nephews.They stare
...

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
...

Of fathers and daughters
A secret stole fires upon fires and within coal
And daughters who write within the lines
Of fathers who cannot pay memory fines.
...

On this particular day for all Fathers
to the three finest Fathers of all time—
the all-knowing and loving Father above,
my biological patient father who begets me
...

Every Father Dies with Pain


Every father dies Unhappy,
...

Young men
Left to be fathers
Of their own.
...

I have been with fathers
They are ordinary human beings
With extraordinary hands
To hold life by the horns
...

Fathers are for caring us
Wherever we are in this world
Fathers are our best nurse.
...

The quarter still remains dark, skin still remains black, out of the Negroes.
The elders still wish we could all be the black,
That of our fore elders.
...

I know my fathers
They are black men with a black heart
Men whose greed has no limit
Men whose hunger can't be satisfied
...

Oh just world of founding fathers,
Never such destiny was your doing
Such melancholy, the demise of others!
...

Lo, there do I see my father,
Lo, there do I see my mother,
And my sisters and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my ancestors
...