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“In a time of deceit, telling the
truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell, author of
1984 and Animal Farm
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“The first function of poetry is to tell the truth,
to learn how to do that, to find out what you
really feel and what you really think.” …
“As a child I was taught that to tell the truth
was often painful. As an adult I have learned
that not to tell the truth is more painful, and
that the fear of telling the truth – whatever
the truth may be – that fear is the most
painful sensation of a moral life.”
― June Jordan, Black American poet and activist,
1991 PEN-West Freedom to Write Award honoree
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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic
for the day's posting. We support our community,
invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful,
respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a
feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 Poets born in July,
testifying to the struggle
for human rights, against
war’s brutality, and in
favor of honesty, humor,
dogs, cats, and travel.
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July 7
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1906 – Helene Johnson born in Boston, Massachusetts, African-American poet, short story writer ; granddaughter of former slaves, she was raised by her mother, her maternal grandfather, and her aunts. The writer Dorothy West was her cousin, and they moved to New York together in 1927, becoming part of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson’s poetry was frequently published in Black magazines, like the National Urban League’s Opportunity, the NAACP’s The Crisis, and Challenge: A Literary Quarterly, published by the Negro Universities Press. Her poem “Bottled” was published in the May 1927 issue of Vanity Fair. Johnson died on her 89th birthday in 1995. Her poems weren’t published as a collection until This Waiting for Love was published in December 2000.
The Road
by Helene Johnson
.
Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze,
A leaping clay hill lost among the trees,
The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush
Caught in a drowsy hush
And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song.
Ah little road, brown as my race is brown,
Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,
Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down.
Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry!
.
“The Road” from This Waiting for Love (collected poems and letters of Helene Johnson), edited by Verner D. Mitchell – University of Massachusetts Press, 2006 edition
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1915 – Margaret Walker born in Birmingham, Alabama , African-American poet and novelist, daughter of Methodist minister, and a mother who was a musician, teacher, and granddaughter of a former slave. The family moved to New Orleans when Margaret was a small child. She met Langston Hughes when he gave a lecture recital at New Orleans University in 1932. He encouraged her to keep writing poetry, and one of her poems was published in The Crisis in 1934. Walker’s first collection of poetry, For My People, won the 1942 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. She was the first black woman to win the prestigious award. Her first novel, Jubilee (1966), is regarded as the first work by a black author to advocate for the liberation of black women. During the Depression, she worked for the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project. She taught literature at Jackson State University (1949-1979).Her poetry collections include Prophets for a New Day; October Journey; and This is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Walker died at age 83 of breast cancer in Chicago in 1998.
The Struggle Staggers Us
by Margaret Walker
.
Our birth and death are easy hours, like sleep
and food and drink. The struggle staggers us
for bread, for pride, for simple dignity.
And this is more than fighting to exist;
more than revolt and war and human odds.
There is a journey from the me to you.
There is a journey from the you to me.
A union of the two strange worlds must be.
.
Ours is a struggle from a too-warm bed;
too cluttered with a patience full of sleep.
Out of this blackness we must struggle forth;
from want of bread, of pride, of dignity.
Struggle between the morning and the night.
This marks our years; this settles, too, our plight.
.
“The Struggle Staggers Us” from This is My Century: New and Collected Poems, © 1989 by Margaret Walker – University of Georgia Press
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July 8
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1902 – Gwendolyn B. Bennett born in Giddings, Texas; African American poet, artist, columnist, educator, and arts administrator associated with the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. The family moved to Washington D.C., and her parents divorced. When Gwendolyn was eight, her father kidnapped her, and they lived on the run on the East Coast. She did not see her mother again until she was an adult. Bennett went to Columbia University, then transferred to the Pratt Institute. Her first poem, “Nocturne” was published in Opportunity magazine in 1923. She taught art at Howard University (1924-1927), but took a year’s leave in 1925 to study art in Paris on a scholarship. She moved to New York, became a contributor to Crisis magazine, then taught high school in Florida, but returned to New York, and worked for the WPA Art Project (1935-1941), and also directed the Harlem Arts Guild. She was scrutinized by the House Un-American Activities Committee from the 1940s well into the 1950s. Bennett worked for the Consumers Union (1948-1968), then opened an antiques store in Pennsylvania. She died at age 78 in May 1981.
Hatred
by Gwendolyn B. Bennett
.
I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.
.
(1926)
“Hatred” from Nocturne & Other Verses, by Gwendolyn B. Bennett - originally published in 1927 – reproduced by Public Domain Press in 2023
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1944 – Mourid Barghouti born in Deir Ghassaneh (now Bani Zeid), near Ramallah in the Governorate of Palestine. He studied English Literature at Cairo University, graduating in 1967, only to be barred from his homeland after the Six-Day War in June that year. Barghouti spent thirty years in exile—shuttling among the world’s cities, never secure—never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest—separated from his family for years at a time. He was married to the novelist Radwa Shour. Their son Tamim, is also a poet. Barghouti’s memoir, I Saw Ramallah, won the 2003 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. He published 13 books of poetry, but only A Small Sun and Midnight and Other Poems have been translated into English. He died at age 78 in Jordan, in February 2021.
Without Mercy
by Mourid Barghouti
.
There is a sweet music,
but its sweetness fails to console you.
This is what the days have taught you:
in every long war
there is a soldier, with a distracted face and ordinary teeth,
who sits outside his tent
holding his bright-sounding harmonica
which he has carefully protected from the dust and blood,
and like a bird
uninvolved in the conflict,
he sings to himself
a love song
that does not lie.
.
For a moment,
he feels embarrassed at what the moonlight might think:
what's the use of a harmonica in hell?
.
A shadow approaches,
then more shadows.
His fellow soldiers, one after the other,
join him in his song.
The singer takes the whole regiment with him
to Romeo's balcony,
and from there,
without thinking,
without mercy,
without doubt,
they will resume the killing!
“Without Mercy” from Midnight and Other Poems, © 2008 by Mourid Barghouti, translation © 2009 by Radwa Ashour – Arc Publications
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July 9
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1936 – June Jordan born in Harlem, New York, the only child of Jamaican immigrant parents. She was a poet, essayist, teacher, feminist, civil rights activist, and self-identified Bisexual. While the students at most of the schools she attended were predominately White, at Barnard College, “No one ever presented me with a single Black author, poet, historian, personage, or idea for that matter. Nor was I ever assigned a single woman to study as a thinker, or writer, or poet, or life force ... Nothing showed me how I might try to alter the political and economic realities underlying our Black condition in white America.” She left without graduating, but returned later. Her first book, Who Look at Me, a collection of poems for children, was published in 1969. She wrote 27 more books, the last three published posthumously. Jordan was the librettist for the musical Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. She taught at several colleges and at SUNY at Stony Brook, then founded the Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley in 1991. She died of breast cancer at age 65 in 2002.
Apologies to All the People in Lebanon
by June Jordan
.
Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women,
and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983.
.
I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?
.
They said you shot the London Ambassador
and when that wasn’t true
they said so
what
They said you shelled their northern villages
and when U.N. forces reported that was not true
because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
They said they wanted simply to carve
a 25 mile buffer zone and then
they ravaged your
water supplies your electricity your
hospitals your schools your highways and byways all
the way north to Beirut because they said this
was their quest for peace
They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery
stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors
to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys
whose bodies
swelled purple and black into twice the original size
and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby
and then
they said this was brilliant
military accomplishment and this was done
they said in the name of self-defense they said
that is the noblest concept
of mankind isn’t that obvious?
They said something about never again and then
they made close to one million human beings homeless
in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed
40,000 of your men and your women and your children
.
But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?
.
They said they were victims. They said you were
Arabs.
They called your apartments and gardens guerrilla
strongholds.
They called the screaming devastation
that they created the rubble.
Then they told you to leave, didn’t they?
.
Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped
from their hotshot fighter jets?
They told you to go.
One hundred and thirty-five thousand
Palestinians in Beirut and why
didn’t you take the hint?
Go!
There was the Mediterranean: You
could walk into the water and stay
there.
What was the problem?
.
I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?
.
Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that
paid
for the bombs and the planes and the tanks
that they used to massacre your family
.
But I am not an evil person
The people of my country aren't so bad
.
You can expect but so much
from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch
American TV
.
You see my point;
.
I’m sorry.
I really am sorry.
.
“Apologies to all the People in Lebanon” from Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan, © 2005 by The June M. Jordan Literary Trust – Copper Canyon Press
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July 10
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1640 – Aphra Behn born in Kent, in southeastern England; English poet and one of the most influential Restoration era playwrights. Her parentage remains disputed, and her early years unknown. She was a traveler; a widow; a spy for an English King who then didn’t pay her, so she was thrown into debtor’s prison, then wrote her way out. She was also a novelist, and one of the few women of her time to write under her own name and earn her living by her pen. Behn was vividly talented, outspokenly opinionated, self-supporting, scandalous, and legendary —Aphra Behn refused to accept the restrictions society imposed on women. She lived by her own rules, even in her last years, when illness made it difficult for her to write.
Love Armed
by Aphra Behn
.
Love in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow’d,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he shew’d;
From thy bright eyes he took his fire,
Which round about in sport he hurl’d;
But ’twas from mine he took desire
Enough to undo the amorous world.
.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty;
From me his languishments and fears,
And every killing dart from thee;
Thus thou and I the God have arm’d,
And set him up a Deity;
But my poor heart alone is harm’d,
Whilst thine the victor is, and free.
.
“Love Armed” from Selected Poems of Aphra Behn – Fyfield Books, 2003 edition
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1875 – Edmund Clerihew Bentley born in London, England; English journalist, novelist, and poet. He attended London’s prestigious St Paul’s School. Gilbert Keith (G. K.) Chesterton was a fellow student, and became his best friend. When Bentley was 16 years old, he started to write short verses about people he knew, or famous people he had read about, which became known as Clerihews. Chesterton took up the hobby too and the rhymes were often accompanied by his sketches. Clerihews have 4 lines, the subject’s name is in the first line, the rhyme scheme is AA/BB, it tells you something about the subject, and it should be amusing. In 1913, exasperated with the infallibility of Sherlock Holmes, he published Trent’s Last Case, regarded as the first “modern” detective novel. E.C. Bentley may be the only author credited with starting two literary forms, one in poetry and the other in genre fiction. He died at age 80 in March 1956.
This is the first known Clerihew:
Sir Humphry Davy
by Edmund Clerihew Bentley
.
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
.
“Sir Humphry Davy” from The Complete Clerihews, by E.C. Bentley –House of Stratus, 2008 edition
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July 11
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1561 – Luis de Góngora y Argote born to a noble family in Córdoba, Spain; influential Spanish Baroque poet and Catholic predendary (administrative clergy). He was ordained in his twenties, but did not become an ordained priest until he was in his 50s.He divided most of his time between Valladolid in northern Spain and Madrid, but often traveled to carry out his duties. As a poet, he had a long feud with his chief rival Francisco de Quevedo. They attacked each other with bitter satirical poems. The feud led to Quevedo buying the house where Góngora was living, and then evicting him. Góngora became seriously ill, returned to Córdoba, and died there at age 65 in May 1627. His legacy rests mainly on two long poems: Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea) and Soledades (Loneliness).
‘Sacred temple of pure honesty’
(De pura honestidad templo sagrado)
by Luis de Góngora y Argote
.
Sacred temple of pure honesty,
Whose foundation and noble wall
Of white nacre and hard alabaster,
Was fashioned by a hand divine,
.
Little door of precious coral,
Clear windows of sure gaze,
Where you transmute purest green
To finest emerald among men,
.
Lofty roof whose golden summits
In the glowing sun, as the eye moves,
Dress it in light, crown it in beauty,
.
Beautiful form, whom the humble worship,
Hear, with pity, one who sighs for you,
Sings your hymns; lauds your virtues.
.
– translation © 2012 by A. S. Kline
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1899 – E.B. White born in Mount Vernon New York; American author, contributing editor to The New Yorker, but best known for his books for young readers, including Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan. In 1959, White revised and updated The Elements of Style, originally written by William Strunk Jr. and published in 1920, created the classic “Strunk & White” guide to clear and stylish writing. He died at age 86 in 1985.
Card of Thanks
by E. B. White
.
A spaniel’s ears hang low, hang low;
They mop the sidewalk as they go.
Instead of burrs and beggar’s-lice,
They pick up things not half so nice.
.
Spaniels deserve our special thanks
For mopping floors in shops and banks,
Resourceful, energetic, keen,
They keep the city nice and clean.
.
Spaniels should be exempt from tax
And be supplied with Johnson’s wax.
.
“Card of Thanks” from E. B. White on Dogs, © 2013 by his granddaughter and literary executor, Martha White – Tilbury House
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1948 – Alan Chong Lau was born in Oroville in Northern California, the son of Chinese parents, and grew up in nearby Paradise, California; American poet and visual artist. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a B.A. in Art. He is the Arts Editor for the Asian American International Examiner newspaper. In 1981, his book Songs for Jadina, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. His 2000 memoir in poetry, Blues and Greens: A Produce Worker’s Journal, is about his time working in Seattle’s Chinatown. As a painter, he is known for his abstract paintings, often inspired by Chinese calligraphy and Japanese Sumi-e, but he also did the illustrations for The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from around the world (2012). His poems in no hurry (2007) were written while traveling in Japan.
train window
by Alan Chong Lau
.
seen from this window
behind the clothes
hung out to dry
the white legs
of daikon
dangling from
their green stems
.
“train window” from no hurry, © 2007 by Alan Chong Lau – Cash Machine Publishers
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July 12
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1904 – Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile, as Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. He was a Chilean diplomat, politician, author, and a poet whose poems were honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He is considered the national poet of Chile. Neruda’s writing covered a wide range: historical epics, political manifestos, an autobiography, surrealist poems, and passionate love poetry. His first collection of verse, Crepusculario (Book of Twilights) was published in 1923 under his pen name, Pablo Neruda. Crepusculario was quickly followed in 1924 by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and A Desperate Song), which is still the best-selling book of poetry in the Spanish language. He was a member of Chilean diplomatic missions in Burma, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, and was in France when he ended his diplomatic career upon being diagnosed with cancer. He died Santiago in September 1973 at age 69. Pinochet, Chile’s military dictator who had just staged his coup d’état, refused permission for Neruda’s funeral to be public, but thousands of defiant mourners attended, surrounded by a massive police presence.
Cat's Dream
by Pablo Neruda
.
How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
sleeps with all the rings –
a series of burnt circles –
which have formed the odd geology
of its sand-colored tail.
.
I should like to sleep like a cat,
with all the fur of time,
with a tongue rough as flint,
with the dry sex of fire;
and after speaking to no one,
stretch myself over the world,
over roofs and landscapes,
with a passionate desire
to hunt the rats in my dreams.
.
I have seen how the cat asleep
would undulate, how the night
flowed through it like dark water;
and at times,it was going to fall
or possibly plunge into
the bare deserted snowdrifts.
Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
like a tiger's great-grandfather,
and would leap in the darkness over
rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.
.
Sleep, sleep cat of the night
with episcopal ceremony
and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams
control the obscurity
of our slumbering prowess
with your relentless heart
and the great ruff of your tail.
.
“Cat’s Dream” from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, by Pablo Neruda – translated by Alastair Reid, © 2004 by City Lights Books and Fundación Pablo Neruda – City Lights Books, Bilingual Edition
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1969 – Briceida Cuevas Cob born in Tepakán, Kalkiní - Mayan poet who writes in Yucatecan Maya and then translates her work into Spanish. She is a member of Escritores en Lenguas Indigenas A.C., and a corresponding member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. Several of her poems were featured in the 2001 Mesoamerican anthology In the Language of Kings. Her poetry collection From the Hem of My Dress appeared in English translation in 2022.
The Owl
by Briceida Cuevas Cob
.
The owl is here.
He perches on the wall. And meditates.
Whose death does he announce
if no one lives in this village?
The fossils of the people
do not cross to either side.
.
The tombs in the cemetery paint the moon
that has begun to chew the underbrush.
The owl
rehearses a song to life.
It refuses to presage its own death.
.
“The Owl” © 2001 by Briceida Cuevas Cob, translation from Spanish © by Earl Shorris and Sylvia Shorris – published in Jaguar Tongues in October 2005
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July 13
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1934 – Wole Soyinka born as Akínwándé Olúwolé Babátúndé Sóyíinká to a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Southern Region, British Nigeria (now Ogun State in Nigeria); Nigerian prolific playwright, novelist, poet, memoirist, and essayist in the English language. After attending a Nigerian college and University College Ibadan, he studied at the University of Leeds in the UK, then worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. In the 1960s, he was an activist in the Nigerian campaign for independence from British colonial rule. During the 1967 Nigerian Civil War, Soyinka was arrested by the military government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it," and spent time in exile, during which he taught ar several American universities, including Cornell, Emory, and Yale, as well as Cambridge and Oxford in the UK. In 1986, he was the first sub-Saharan African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His poetry collections include: Poems from Prison; A Shuttle in the Crypt; Mandela’s Earth and other poems; and Samarkand & Other Markets I Have Known. Soyinka threatened to burn his green card after Trump was elected President.
Telephone Conversation
by Wole Soyinka
.
The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. "Madam" , I warned,
"I hate a wasted journey - I am African."
Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.
"HOW DARK?"...I had not misheard...."ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?" Button B. Button A. Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar.
It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis-
"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT" Revelation came
"You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?"
Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted
I chose. "West African sepia"_ and as afterthought.
"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness chaged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding "DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."
"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?"
"Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet.
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused-
Foolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears- "Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather
See for yourself?"
.
“Telephone Conversation” © 1963 by Wole Soyinka, from Modern Poetry from Africa – Penguin Books
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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