The Animals

By W. S. Merwin

All these years behind windows With blind crosses sweeping the tables And myself tracking over empty ground Animals I never saw I with no voice Remembering names to invent for them Will any come back will one Saying yes Saying look carefully yes We will meet again

Holy Sonnets: If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

By John Donne

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,

If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

Cannot be damn'd, alas, why should I be?

Why should intent or reason, born in me,

Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?

And mercy being easy, and glorious

To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?

But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,

O God? Oh, of thine only worthy blood

And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,

And drown in it my sins' black memory.

That thou remember them, some claim as debt;

I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

Unaccompanied Anthem

Unaccompanied Anthem 

By Rita Dove 

We live as we dream ... alone.—Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”I was not born to thiswariness. I came of ageas my kind do—armed with acheand swathed in rectitude,a rough carvingsluiced under a torrentof disregard. Still, I did notsuffer unduly. Most oftenI bore witness: I listened,then took it back into a solitudeneither light nor raincould reach. There I would sitand rock myself warm.I tell you this long pastthe learning of it. I ate quickly,dreamt little, read like a fiend—not quite a shadow,more than a smudge;you begrudged meeven these tremulouspleasures. I came to yougrinning with grief,but if called uponwould not pause to lift up a fist—the only one in the roomwho raises her handwhen no one else speaks,though the answer is obvious.