Favorite Poems

The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Adolescence by Claude McKay

There was a time when in late afternoon
The four-o'clocks would fold up at day's close
Pink-white in prayer, and 'neath the floating moon
I lay with them in calm and sweet repose.

And in the open spaces I could sleep,
Half-naked to the shining worlds above;
Peace came with sleep and sleep was long and deep,
Gained without effort, sweet like early love.

But now no balm--nor drug nor weed nor wine--
Can bring true rest to cool my body's fever,
Nor sweeten in my mouth the acid brine,
That salts my choicest drink and will forever.

Oración al Angel de la Guarda

Angel de mi guarda,
dulce compañía,
no me desampares
ni de noche ni de día

Las horas que pasan,
las horas del día,
si tú estás conmigo
... serán de alegría

No me dejes solo,
sé en todo mi guía;
sin Ti soy chiquito
y me perdería

Ven siempre a mi lado,
tu mano en la mía.
¡Ángel de la guarda,
dulce compañía!

Bendita la luz del día
y el Señor que nos la envía.
¡Bendito el Niño Jesús,
bendita Santa María!

Con Dios me acuesto,
con Dios me levanto,
con la Virgen María
y el Espíritu Santo

Cuatro esquinitas
tiene mi cama,
cuatro angelitos
guardan mi alma

Todos le llevan al niño,
yo también le llevaré,
una jarra de manteca
y un tazón de dulce miel.

Todos le llevan al niño,
yo también le llevaré,
las cosas que a mí me gustan
para que goce Emmanuel.

Me ha contado Jesusito:
viene para que yo sea
un angelito en el cielo
y su amigo aquí en la tierra.

Yo le he dicho a Jesusito
que yo seré aquí en la tierra
su amiguito para siempre
y que en el cielo le vea.

Jesusito de mi vida,
eres niño como yo,
mira cuanto que te quiero
que te doy mi corazón.
¡Tómalo! ¡Tómalo!
Tuyo es, y mío no.