*
Den 15 april släppte Library of Congress i Washington en nyhet. De gjorde sitt arkiv med inspelningar av föreläsningar och författarläsningar tillgängliga via en strömmande online-tjänst. Det går att lyssna till flera storheter, bland dem Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost och Gwendolyn Brooks. Med tanke på Unicef-filmerna som visas i TV4 kan det vara värt att publicera följande dikt av Gwendolyn Brooks.
Black Love, by Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
(From Black love. [Chicago, Ill.] : [Brooks Press], 1982.)
Black love, provide the adequate electric
for what is lapsed and lenient in us now.
Rouse us from blur. Call us.
Call adequately the postponed corner brother.
And call our man in the pin-stripe suiting and restore him to his abler logic; to his people.
Call to the shattered sister and repair her
in her difficult hour, narrow her fever.
Call to the Elders—
our customary grace and further sun
loved in the Long-ago, loathed in the Lately;
a luxury of languish and of rust.
Appraise, Assess our Workers in the Wild, lest they descend to malformation and to undertow.
Black love, define and escort our romantic young, by means and redemption,
discipline.
Nourish our children—proud, strong
little men upright-easy:
quick
flexed
little stern-warm historywomen....
I see them in Ghana, Kenya, in the city of Dar-es-Salaam, in Kalamazoo, Mound Bayou, in Chicago.
Lovely loving children
with long soft eyes.
Black love, prepare us all for interruptions;
assaults, unwanted pauses; furnish for leavings and for losses.
Just come out Blackly glowing!
On the ledges—in the lattices—against the failing light of candles that stutter,
and in the chop and challenge of our apprehension—
be the Alwayswonderful of this world.
***
I Greenfield, Massachusetts, arrangerar folkbiblioteket varje år sedan 1991 en texttävling till minnet av Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, i samarbete med Stoneleigh-Burnham school. Följande citat är från skolans hemsida:
The Friends of the Greenfield Public Library has sponsored the Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest each year since 1991. The competition is held in honor of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman who lived in Greenfield from 1847 until his death in 1873 and was considered by his contemporaries – Emerson, Thoreau, and Tennyson – to be a gifted poet.
Tuckerman skrev följande vackra dikt om Green River som flyter genom Greenfield, ett år före Longfellow's berömda "The Song of Hiawatha" kom ut. Picomegan är indianernas namn på floden.
Picomegan (part 2), by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
Dreamily, for perfect Summer
Hushed the vales with misty heat;
In the wood a drowsy drummer,
The woodpecker, faintly beat.
Songs were silent, save the voices
Of the mountain and the flood,
Save the wisdom of the voices
Only known in solitude:
But to me, a lonely liver,
All that fading afternoon
From the undermining river
Came a burthen in its tune,
Came a tone my ear remembers,
And I said, “What grief thee grieves,
Pacing through thy leafy chambers,
And thy voice of rest bereaves?”
...
*
En av de nominerade finalisterna i texttävlingen bidrog med den här texten.
Summer dreams, by Isabela Cusano
I come from muddy boots and drumming rain,
Purring cats and the view from the sweet fern hill.
I hold fresh picked apples from the windy orchard,
And the loneliness, the empathy and friendly chickadees at the feeder.
I believe in asking too many questions,
And loving first, last and always.
I am wind in dry grass, a silhouette on the horizon,
And that stubborn little girl who always dreams.
***
Jag har tidigare fördjupat mig i projektet "Poems on the Underground" i London, och publicerat ett flertal dikter. Projektet fortgår så klart, och i år hyllas William Butler Yeats som föddes för 150 år sedan. En av hans dikter som går att läsa i Londons tunnelbanor är den här:
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
(From The Wind Among the Reeds. London : E. Mathews, 1899.)
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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