I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

 

I am waiting for the Second Coming

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona

and I am waiting

for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored

and I am seriously waiting ...

for Billy Graham and Elvis Presley

to exchange roles seriously

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped onto church altars

if only they can find

the right channel

to tune in on

and I am waiting

for the Last Supper to be served again

with a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder.

 

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the living end

and I am waiting

for dad to come home

his pockets full

of irradiated silver dollars

and I am waiting

for the atomic tests to end

and I am waiting happily

for things to get much worse

before they improve

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the human crowd

to wander off a cliff somewhere

clutching its atomic umbrella

and I am waiting

for Ike to act

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting ...

for linnets and planets to fall like rain. . .

in a new rebirth of wonder.

 

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered

by an obscure general practitioner

and save me forever from certain death

and I am waiting

for life to begin

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness ...

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

 

 

f f f g g g

 

 

Go to the website for The Academy of American Poets at http://www.poets.org/

Look on the menu on the left side of the page for “Find a Poet” and use it to find out more about Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Pablo Neruda. Click on the letter for their last names and look down the list which opens up. Click on the poet’s name and you will find a short bio plus a few of their poems online.

TONIGHT  I CAN WRITE

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.

Her voice, her bright body, her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her,

-- Pablo Neruda in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

 translated by W.S. Merwin

Pablo Neruda was born in the frontier lands of southern Chile in 1904 and lived a life charged with political and poetic activity. In 1971, Neruda, often referred to as "the poet of enslaved humanity," was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1973.  His Memoirs are worth reading.