Fossil

With such agility in your movements,
Such buoyancy in your strength,
You leaped in the foam
And swam in the sea.

Unfortunately a volcano's eruption
Or perhaps an earthquake
Cost you your freedom
And buried you in the silt.

After millions of years
Members of a geological team
Found you in a layer of rock
And you still look alive.

But you are now silent,
Without even sight.
Your scales and fins are whole
But you cannot move.

So absolutely motionless,
You have no reaction to the world.
You cannot see the water or the sky,
You cannot hear the sound of the waves.

Gazing at this fossil,
Even a fool can learn a lot:
Without movement
There is no life.

To live is to struggle
And advance in the struggle;
Even if death is inevitable.
We should use our energy to the fullest.

Ai Qing, father Ai Weiwei

The Destroyer

I am the wind...
A wisp of the battering wind...

I trail my fingers along the Alps
And an avalanche falls in my wake...
I feel in my quivering length
When it buries the hamlet beneath...

I hurriedly sweep aside
The cities that clutter our path...
As we whirl about the circle of the globe...
As we tear at the pillars of the world...
Open to the wind,
The Destroyer!
The wind that is battering at your gates.

Lola Ridge

Revolution

What husks of last year's winter close you in,
To-morrow's world -- what dead, what wrinkled skin
Of ancient parchments, laws, beliefs! what dried,
Worn, tattered layers keep the life inside,
Where slender as a sword, and tender green
It trembles, pushes, patient and unseen:
Vibrating atom, fronded silken thread,
Some day to shake, to sunder back the dead
Two halves of hemispheres -- to pierce the crust
Of ages' rubbish, crowns and cults and dust!

See, iron arms, that clutter all the wide
Plateau of liberty -- see, fortified
Dull spikey towns -- you cannot hold your own
Against one seed a fecund earth has grown!
Alarmed you stand, alert to meet your foe,
Ready to battle blow for thundering blow;
Nor do you see this sprout of common wheat,
The blade, between your firm implanted feet.

Genevieve Taggard

Twentieth Century Slave-Gang

We who have seen the city's sentinel --
Some iron-colored tower, monument
To slow encroaching force -- our thews are bent
Against her girders! With her noise, her knell
From this our iron tongue we toll, to tell
Torture and toil. Her children are content;
They sleep behind spears, belligerent --
Until they start in terror....
Toll the bell:

Prepare, prepare to see your towers fall;
Foundations groan, no longer to withstand
The burdens of your abundant banquet hall.

So perished Babylon. Behold the hand
That turns your river underneath the wall
And makes your wealth an avalanche of sand!

Genevieve Taggard For Eager Lovers

Dans le Printemps de Mes Années

Dans le printemps de mes années
Je meurs victime de l'amour

Ah, gardez-vous de mes guérir

http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/amherst/ma42.html