Katrina Poetry

Invictus

 
Photo via Flickr

Invictus
By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

[ via dubious wonder ]

Fray

 
Photo via Operation Eden

Fray
By Carl Phillips

There it lay, before me, as they had
said it would: a distance
I'd wish to cross,

then try to, then leave
off wishing. Words like arc,
and trajectory. And push. The words

themselves over time
coming to matter
the way, in painting, color does: less,

finally, than the gesture
each stroke
memorializes.

A kind of sleep
that will look like death,
they said,

A kind of waking that will look
bewildered.
I woke,

as it were. I was not
bewildered. The distance as uncrossed
as it had been,

but now a clarity—like that
of vision. A kind of crossing.
Parts that the light

reached, relative
to everything else, what the light
kept missing. Spirea

in a wind; wind in the spirea's
leggy branches—I could make
distinctions: weeping

spruce; weeping maple. I could love you
as I had loved you—as only
humans can love each other: it's

a human need,
to give to shapelessness
a form.

[ via bookofjoe ]

Theories of Time and Space

Photo via Flickr

Theories of Time and Space
By Natasha Trethewey
From Native Guard: Poems

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry – tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return