Looking at the grinding stones, Kabir laments
In the duel of wheels, nothing stays intact.

searching for the wicked, met not a single one
When searched myself, ‘I’ found the wicked one

Tomorrows work do today, today’s work anon
if the moment is lost, when will the work be done

Speak such words, sans ego’s ploy
Body remains composed, giving the listener joy

Slowly slowly O mind, everything in own pace happens
Gardner may water a hundred buckets, fruit arrives only in its season

Give so much O God, suffice to envelop my clan
I should not suffer cravings, nor the visitor goes unfed

In vain is the eminence, just like a date tree
No shade for travelers, fruit is hard to reach

Like seed contains the oil, fire in flint stone
Your heart seats the Divine, realize if you can

Kabira in the market place, wishes welfare of all
Neither friendship nor enmity with anyone at all

Reading books everyone died, none became any wise
One who reads the words of Love, only becomes wise

In anguish everyone prays to Him, in joy does none
To One who prays in happiness, how sorrow can come

— Kabir, Looking At The Grinding Stones

Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell—if still your orchards bear
Tart apples on the bough—

The early windfall under the tree,
And see the red fruit shine,
I cannot think your thoughts will be
Much different from mine.

Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadow of the trees, —
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,

A man no longer what he was,
Nor yet the thing he’d planned,
The chilly apple from the grass
Warmed by your living hand—

I think you will have need of tears;
I think they will not flow;
Supposing in ten thousand years
Men ache, as they do now.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, If Your Orchards Bear

There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts- –
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

— Georg Trakl, De Profundis

Without discord
And both accord
Now let us be;
Both hearts alone
To set in one
Best seemeth me.
For when one soul
Is in the dole
Of lovë’s pain,
Then help must have
Himself to save
And love to obtain.

Wherefore now we
That lovers be,
Let us now pray,
Once love sure
For to procure
Without denay.
Where love so sues
There no heart rues,
But condescend;
If contrary,
What remedy?
God it amend.

— King Henry VIII, Without Discord

August 14th, 1914

Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The
zigzagging cry
of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the
head
of the serpent to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching
men.
Men weighed down with rifles and knapsacks, and parching with war.
The cry jars and splits against the brazen, burnished sky.
This is the war of wars, and the cause? Has
this writhing worm of men
a cause?
Crackling against the polished sky is an eagle
with a sword. The eagle is red
and its head is flame.

In the shoulder of the worm is a teacher.
His tongue laps the war-sucked air in drought,
but he yells defiance
at the red-eyed eagle, and in his ears are the bells of new philosophies,
and their tinkling drowns the sputter of the burning sword. He
shrieks,
“God damn you! When you are broken, the word will strike
out new shoots.”
His boots are tight, the sun is hot, and he may
be shot, but he is in
the shoulder of the worm.

A dust speck in the worm’s belly is a poet.
He laughs at the flaring eagle and makes a long
nose with his fingers.
He will fight for smooth, white sheets of paper, and uncurdled ink.
The sputtering sword cannot make him blink, and his thoughts are
wet and rippling. They cool his heart.
He will tear the eagle out of the sky and give
the earth tranquillity,
and loveliness printed on white paper.

The eye of the serpent is an owner of mills.
He looks at the glaring sword which has snapped
his machinery
and struck away his men.
But it will all come again, when the sword is broken
to a million dying stars,
and there are no more wars.

Bankers, butchers, shop-keepers, painters, farmers — men, sway
and sweat.
They will fight for the earth, for the increase of the slow, sure
roots
of peace, for the release of hidden forces. They jibe
at the eagle
and his scorching sword.
One! Two! — One! Two! —
clump the heavy boots. The cry hurtles
against the sky.
Each man pulls his belt a little tighter, and shifts
his gun
to make it lighter. Each man thinks of a woman, and slaps
out a curse
at the eagle. The sword jumps in the hot sky, and the
worm crawls on
to the battle, stubbornly.
This is the war of wars, from eye to tail the serpent
has one cause:
PEACE!

— Amy Lowell, The Allies