St. Roach
by Muriel Rukeyser
For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you,
for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth,
they showed me by every action to despise your kind;
for that I saw my people making war on you,
I could not tell you apart, one from another,
for that in childhood I lived in places clear of you,
for that all the people I knew met you by
crushing you, stamping you to death, they poured boiling
water on you, they flushed you down,
for that I could not tell one from another
only that you were dark, fast on your feet, and slender.
Not like me.
For that I did not know your poems
And that I do not know any of your sayings
And that I cannot speak or read your language
And that I do not sing your songs
And that I do not teach our children
to eat your food
or know your poems
or sing your songs
But that we say you are filthing our food
But that we know you not at all.
Yesterday I looked at one of you for the first time.
You were lighter that the others in color, that was
neither good nor bad.
I was really looking for the first time.
You seemed troubled and witty.
Today I touched one of you for the first time.
You were startled, you ran, you fled away
Fast as a dancer, light, strange, and lovely to the touch.
I reach, I touch, I begin to know you.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- In An Underground Dressing Station by Siegfried Sassoon
- St. Francis of Assisi by Vachel Lindsay
- Robert Burns: Hey, The Dusty Miller:
- Holiday Letter For A Poet Gone To War
- Владимир Корнилов – Незадача
- Sonnet 102: My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming by William Shakespeare
- Epitaph For Fire And Flower by Sylvia Plath
- Федор Сологуб – Терцинами писать как будто очень трудно
- Владимир Вишневский – Долго же мы друг друга откладывали
- What the Miner in the Desert Said by Vachel Lindsay
- Sonnet 11
- The Fisherman by William Butler Yeats
- Eye By Eye by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Sonnet XI. On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Высоцкий – Памятник
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
