Here’s a translation of the poem by Pablo Neruda:

XXII — So is My Life
My duty moves along with my song:
I am I am not: that is my destiny.
I exist not if I do not attend to the pain
of those who suffer: they are my pains.
For I cannot be without existing for all,
for all who are silent and oppressed.
I come from the people and I sing for them:
my poetry is song and punishment.
I am told: you belong to darkness.
Perhaps, perhaps, but I walk toward the light.
I am the man of bread and fish
and you will not find me among books,
but with women and men:
they have taught me the infinite.

Below the freeway at about five a.m.
I am walking in the weak variegated beams
lamps cast around tree branches naked and blue and
faded against the sun rising behind them,
behind the police station and the video store.

Last night, in the dust and gaudy blue and red
young loud women and quiet men
pushed past each other to the bar
and between the lights and the bathroom
they talked to each other

and asked each other questions.
They can’t help asking where they saw
each other before.

Near a dirty meadow in the park,
couples metamorphose and develop
and bifurcate and wave
as they walk out from within the trees,
as the traffic grows thicker and more vicious,
as the sun irradiates the freeways.
And, while a group of three ducks aimlessly circle an empty
beaver lodge nearby, I am sitting up and opening my eyes,
and the faces of last night have left
a shadow on my body.

My body is breathing, leaned against
the shelter of a concrete cylinder,
and the freeways sing to me
a song not written by just one man.

‘Cuz I cannot consider myself a poet.

Sitting in emotion
Stewing
Like a piece of tough meat;
The man in the window seat
Is dressed for business:
Cell phone to his ear,
Expectation a soft burr
In his voice,
Good news could produce
A smile.
I feel an odd mirroring of my mood.

Rory Link
August 2009

what does it mean, yoursmine
when the walking blind see
how it tastes
why the fragrance lingers
whose touch it does beg
where the sound of dreams is a hunger

Should I check the snow
cov’rd path for visitors
or, should I, my lips?

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

We are a tiny neighbors’ gem
As mentioned every now and then
by a blog called “Wallyhood”.
where good friends notice what is good.

Drawing neighbors in to see
what makes us all “community”
Be it blog online or store next door.
Thank you, (Wallyhood and Open Books!) ever more!

One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
No physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the
Muse,
I say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I’m afraid
I might kill myself
if I don’t wear it

you’ve been wearing it
every day since we met
he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don’t set fire to something?
he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I’d like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I’m wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don’t get any ideas

and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door