Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die,
Nor e'en the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh?

It's This Way

© Nazim Hikmet

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Things I Didn't Know I Loved

© Nazim Hikmet

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

The army was asleep as armies sleep.
War lying on a casual sheaf peace
For a brief moment, and yet with armor on,
And yet in the cild's deep sleep, and yet so still.
Even the sentries seemed to walk their posts
With a ghost footfall that could match that night.

Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. The Poet's Tale; Lady Wentworth

© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt.
A widower and childless; and he felt
The loneliness, the uncongenial gloom,
That like a presence haunted every room;
For though not given to weakness, he could feel
The pain of wounds, that ache because they heal.

I Dream Of My Grandmother And Great-grandmother

I imagine them walking down rocky paths
toward me, strong, Italian women returning
at dusk from fields where they worked all day
on farms built like steps up the sides