Hard Loving, Marge Piercy
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To Be of Use
by Marge Piercy
The people I love best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shadows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
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favourite poems of august
marge piercy circles on the water: selected poems of marge piercy: "for the young who want to"
marilyn chin fruit études
lisa olstein radio crackling, radio gone: "the hypnotist's daughter"
elizabeth willis address: "the witch"
jana prikryl the after party: "to tell of bodies changed"
diane seuss backyard song
alison c. rollings original [sin]
gerard malanga cornelius...cornelius gurlitt
todd boss rocket
beyza ozer to summarise a galaxy
john foy night vision: "woods"
clodagh beresford dunne ford galaxy
dorianne laux smoke: "heart"
anthony madrid like a cloud above the ravine
pascale petit swamp deer
frank o'hara maurice ravel
adonis selected poems: "desert" (tr. khaled mattawa)
sonja johanson three deer in oquossoc
melissa stein terrible blooms: "lemon and cedar"
w. s. di piero having my cards read
thomas hoagland bible study
peter campion big avalanche ravine
alberto ríos the smallest muscle in the human body: "rabbits and fire"
lena khalaf tuffaha water & salt: "mountain, stone"
josephine miles desert
jeanne murray walker invocation to convince a baby already more than twelve days overdue to come out of the womb
andrew hudgins the imagined copperhead
robert carr stargazing while sedated
mary ruefle among the musk ox people: poems: "blood soup"
jack collom red car goes by: selected poems 1955-2000: "bald eagle count"
mahmoud darwish to a young poet (tr. fady joudah)
kofi
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oh god The real writer is one who really writes talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire work is its own cure you have to like it better than being loved
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someone said Armin didn’t know the plan had changed to kill Eren and now i’m abt to kms
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september afternoon, at four o’clock by Marge Piercy
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36-38 Berkeley Square, London
Piercy&Company
2023
Alex Jackson
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The Hunger Moon, Marge Piercy
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The Birthday of the World
by Marge Piercy
On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding
of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.
No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?
How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where
have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke
the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling
my eyes, and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.
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Hard Loving, poems by Marge Piercy
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