WWE ~ Detailed Poems (U1)

Woman Work -  Maya Angelou

I've got the children to tend

The clothes to mend

The floor to mop

The food to shop

Then the chicken to fry

The baby to dry

I got company to feed

The garden to weed

I've got shirts to press

The tots to dress

The can to be cut

I gotta clean up this hut

Then see about the sick

And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine

Rain on me, rain

Fall softly, dewdrops

And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here

With your fiercest wind

Let me float across the sky

'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes

Cover me with white

Cold icy kisses and

Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky

Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone

Star shine, moon glow

You're all that I can call my own. 

Empty Space -  Amrita Pritam

There were two kingdoms only:

the first of them threw out both him and me.

The second we abandoned.

Under a bare sky

I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,

he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.

He held my hand with a trembling hand.

'Come, let's have a roof over our heads awhile.

Look, further on ahead, there

between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.' 

Hunger Flew With Me From Cameroon

Viola Allo

I wept at the littoral airport in Douala,

said goodbye to my friends, felt them fade away

at takeoff, as the lumpish green of rain forest

was consumed by ivory clouds. I sifted through

tiny packages of yogurt, pudding, and cheese,

curious for something, a familiar taste; wondered if this

would be the food of my new life: too sweet, too soft, too weak

in flavor. Stowed in the belly of the plane, my edible luggage

sent comfort to me like clean air through the vents—my spices,

my culinary companions culled for my student days

in White-Man Country. I inhaled the cold air at O'Hare, tried hard

to exhale the floral scent of Americans, as the customs officer

stamped my passport and said, Welcome to the United States!

I rode in a box, a narrow lift, up four floors

to sleep off my jet lag in an apartment I could not leave

because my brother said, You might get shot if you do.

I opened my searched luggage right away to find

that my Cameroonian food was gone, bent over and into my bags,

my face a dusky African mask with gaping mouth, stuck my nose

into the tailored clothes I'd brought, trying to breathe in

the dizzying dust of crayfish and country-onions, balmy odor

of smoked fish and bitter-leaf, singular incense folded

into the African prints my friends had packed for me,

combed through the gifts and keepsakes—cowhide purses,

woven goods, woodcarvings—all acrid, angry-scented

like fermented cassava, sniffed for nutty traces of the njangsa

my aunt had ground for pepper soup, licked the flakes

of embargoed spices from the creases in my bags,

carried them on my tongue.

Lot’s Wife

Anna Akhmatova

And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed.”

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.