Mending Wall - ROBERT FROST

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side.  It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it

Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.'  I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself.  I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

A Word on Statistics - Wislawa Szymborska

Out of every hundred people,

those who always know better:

fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:

almost all the rest.

Ready to help,

if it doesn’t take long:

forty-nine.

Always good,

because they cannot be otherwise:

four – well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:

eighteen.

Led to error

by youth (which passes):

sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:

four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear

of someone or something:

seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:

twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,

turning savage in crowds:

more than half, for sure.

Cruel

when forced by circumstances:

it’s better not to know,

not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:

not many more

than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things:

thirty

(though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain

and without a flashlight in the dark:

eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just:

quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:

three.

Worthy of empathy:

ninety-nine.

Mortal:

one hundred out of one hundred –

a figure that has never varied yet.

Leo, His Life - Gösta Ågren

It was difficult to be, not

for the human in him, but for

the animal, which had not the strength to carry

the leaden weight of consciousness. The knowledge

that he was alive prevented him

from living. It formed

a sleepless face that looked

at his emotions until they crept

away like actors

from a bad performance

and that thought that he thought,

until each thought deepened to

nothing in this cold light. He

was himself the enemy, and wrote

books in order to defeat himself,

but in such a battle the only

possible victory is too great.

He won. In the silence

afterwards came a few

last fumbling words.

Tact - Edwin Arlington Robinson

Observant of the way she told

So much of what was true,

No vanity could long withhold

Regard that was her due:

She spared him the familiar guile,

So easily achieved,

That only made a man to smile

And left him undeceived.

Aware that all imagining

Of more than what she meant

Would urge an end of everything,

He stayed; and when he went,

They parted with a merry word

That was to him as light

As any that was ever heard

Upon a starry night.

She smiled a little, knowing well

That he would not remark

That ruins of a day that fell

Around her in the dark:

He saw no ruins anywhere,

Nor fancied there were scars

On anyone who lingered there,

Alone below the stars.

The Picture of Grandfather and Grandmother - Gösta Ågren

There they stand, seemingly without

secrets, for years and poverty

have made them distinct. Yet

the camera lies, like all who

say nothing except merely

the truth. He did as others do,

became a father, built his house.

She helped sick folk, practiced

kindness. But all his movements

were fingers of ash, fumbling

as the cold floor-draught

willed. Her kindness resembled all

other: a sternness that never

exhorts, but demands. Early

she knew it was

her only protection. So

it may have been, but perhaps

our life is only a line

in the poem about our life. Perhaps

we are not the name

we write, but

the nameless hand

that grasps the pen.

Invictus, aka Out Of The Night That Covers Me - 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.