Morrígan to the Brown Bull, from the Táin Bó Cúailnge

 

Dark one are you restless
            do you guess they gather
to certain slaughter
            the wise raven
groans aloud
            that enemies infest
the fair fields
            ravaging in packs
learn I discern
            rich plains
softly wavelike
            baring their necks
greenness of grass
            beauty of blossoms
on the plains war
            grinding heroic
hosts to dust
            cattle groans the Badb
the raven ravenous
            among corpses of men
affliction and outcry
            and war everlasting
raging over Cuailnge
            death of sons
death of kinsmen
            death        death  !

Raina Gentry

"Grandmother in the Garden" by Louise Glück

 

The grass below the willow
Of my daughter’s wash is curled
With earthworms, and the world
Is measured into row on row
Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real.
The drugged Long Island summer sun drains
Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson
Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life.
The yellow daylight lines the oak leaf
And the wire vines melt with the unchanged changes
Of the baby. My children have their husbands’ hands.
My husband’s framed, propped bald as a baby on their pianos,
My tremendous man. I close my eyes. And all the clothes
I have thrown out come back to me, the hollows
Of my daughters’ slips…they drift; I see the sheer
Summer cottons drift, equivalent to air.

Patricia Polacco

"Yours" by Daniel Hoffman

I am yours as the summer air at evening is
Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms,

As the snowcap gleams with light
Lent it by the brimming moon.

Without you I'd be an unleafed tree
Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.

Your love is the weather of my being.
What is an island without the sea?

Kehinde Wiley