Society and the World

In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark.

We must love one another or die.

We must love one another or die.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window Or just walking dully along.

Sir, no man’s enemy, forgiving all But will his negative inversion, be prodigal.

Let us honor if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.

Come up with me, American love. Kiss these secret stones with me. The torrential silver of the Urubamba makes the pollen fly to its golden cup. The hollow of the bindweed’s maze, the petrified plant, the inflexible garland, soar above the silence of these mountain coffers.

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

But from each hollow of Spain Spain comes forth.

there are so many people dead and so many sea-walls that the red sun used to split, and so many heads that the boats hit, and so many hands that have closed around kisses, and so many things I would like to forget.

Treacherous generals: look at my dead house, look at broken Spain.

Treacherous generals: look at my dead house, look at broken Spain.

O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet—

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway… He did a lazy sway… To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

The light is buried under chains and noises in impudent challenge of rootless science. Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger, as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.

The New York dawn has four columns of mud and a hurricane of black doves that paddle in putrescent waters.

Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness, Could not ourselves be kind. But you, when at last it comes to pass That man can help his fellow man, Do not judge us Too harshly.

Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness, Could not ourselves be kind. But you, when at last it comes to pass That man can help his fellow man, Do not judge us Too harshly.

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.