STILL I RISE

by: Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise
 An Arm’s Length of Heaven

by: Amado V. Hernandez

I was incarcerated by a cruel leader,

asking for the price of my crushed spirit,

the body is weak, so I must surrender,

if spirit is defeated it embraced defeat

I was cornered in a fortress of brute gallows:

stone, steel, bullet, guard’s enmity, the constant knife;

I was spewed out from the entire world of sorrows

And taken for dead when life has not escaped life

In a tiny window, all one can penetrate

is an arm’s length of heaven full of bitter tears,

selfish panorama or a wounded heart’s gate,

flag of my wantonness, kerchief of sneers.

As knife the thunder of guardsman’s rolling eyes,

Fixed on locked door no body dares the length;

A prisoner’s yell in the adjacent sty

Was as a cavern animal’s trapped in its strength.

The entire day was chained to the entire structure,

Dragged as steel ball by shod foot pulped and bloody;

The entire night is a tent of grief and injure,

by the casket which was the only sanctuary.

Once, simple steps trace the cordoned blockade,

The hooks of steel chains are scraping concrete;

under pale sun put out to dry and to degrade,

Once the night was suddenly brought to a scare

by an alarm – an escape! – gunshots were flying;

Once the old bell was pealing out in black despair,

in the death chamber, someone’s breath is escaping.

And now this is my only constant universe -

Interred in prison, graveyard of the living;

a decade, or two, or all of the coming scores

of all of my life here consumed while I’m fading.

But my spirit shall conquer fear, ordeal

My blood veins shall still run, my blood flow’s still a stream:

A prison is but part of dealing with evil,

To be imprisoned is to crush surrender’s dream.

Gods and men are not forever asleep

the oppressed shall not be the oppressed of every chance,

this grave injustice has a battle cry to keep,

As long as there’s Bastille, a country exacts vengeance.

And tomorrow, in the same window, I shall see

from the arm’s length of heaven without a single tear,

the provident sun shall rise a shining victory ...

my freed self shall come down to greet my self free!

by Matsuo Basho

Long, long ago there lived at the foot of the mountain a poor farmer and his aged, widowed mother.
They owned a bit of land which supplied them with food, and they were humble, peaceful, and happy.

Shining was governed by a despotic leader who though a warrior, had a great and cowardly shrinking
from anything suggestive of failing health and strength. This caused him to send out a cruel
proclamation. The entire province was given strict orders to immediately put to death all aged people.
Those were barbarous days, and the custom of abandoning old people to die was not uncommon. The
poor farmer loved his aged mother with tender reverence, and the order filled his heart with sorrow.
But no one ever thought twice about obeying the mandate of the governor, so with many deep and
hopeless sighs, the youth prepared for what at that time was considered the kindest mode of death.

Just at sundown, when his day’s work was ended, he took a quantity of unwhitened rice which was the
principal food for the poor, and he cooked, dried it, and tied it in a square cloth, which he swung in a
bundle around his neck along with a gourd filled with cool, sweet water. Then he lifted his helpless old
mother to his back and started on his painful journey up the mountain. The road was long and steep; the
narrow road was crossed and re-crossed by many paths made by the hunters and woodcutters. In some
place, they lost and confues, but he gave no heed. One path or another, it mattered not. On he went,
climbing blindly upward -- ever upward towards the high bare summit of what is known as Obatsuyama,
the mountain of the “abandoning of the aged.”

The eyes of the old mother were not so dim but that they noted the reckless hastening from one path to
another, and her loving heart grew anxious. Her son did not know the mountain’s many paths and his
return might be one of danger, so she stretched forth her hand and snapping the twigs from brushes as
they passed, she quietly dropped a handful every few steps of the way so that as they climbed, the
narrow path behind them was dotted at frequent intervals with tiny piles of twigs. At last the summit
was reached. Weary and heart sick, the youth gently released his burden and silently prepared a place of
comfort as his last duty to the loved one. Gathering fallen pine needles, he made a soft cushion and
tenderly lifted his old mother onto it. Hew rapped her padded coat more closely about the stooping
shoulders and with tearful eyes and an aching heart he said farewell.

The trembling mother’s voice was full of unselfish love as she gave her last injunction. “Let not thine
eyes be blinded, my son.” She said. “The mountain road is full of dangers. LOOK carefully and follow the
path which holds the piles of twigs. They will guide you to the familiar path farther down.” The son’s
surprised eyes looked back over the path, then at the poor old, shriveled hands all scratched and soiled
by their work of love. His heart broke within and bowing to the ground, he cried aloud: “oh, Honorable
mother, your kindness breaks my heart! I will not leave you. Together we will follow the path of twigs,
and together we will die!”

Once more he shouldered his burden (how light it seemed now) and hastened down the path, through
the shadows and the moonlight, to the little hut in the valley. Beneath the kitchen floor was a walled
 closet for food, which was covered and hidden from view. There the son hid his mother, supplying her
with everything she needed, continually watching and fearing she would be discovered. Time passed,
and he was beginning to feel safe when again the governor sent forth heralds bearing an unreasonable
order, seemingly as a boast of his power. His demand was that his subjects should present him with a
rope of ashes.

The entire province trembled with dread. The order must be obeyed yet who in all Shining could make a
rope of ashes? One night, in great distress, the son whispered the news to his hidden mother. “Wait!”
she said. “I will think. I will think” On the second day she told him what to do. “Make rope of twisted
straw,” she said. “Then stretch it upon a row of flat stones and burn it on a windless night.” He called the
people together and did as she said and when the blaze died down, there upon the stones, with every
twist and fiber showing perfectly, lay a rope of ashes.

The governor was pleased at the wit of the youth and praised greatly, but he demanded to know where
he had obtained his wisdom. “Alas! Alas!” cried the farmer, “the truth must be told!” and with deep
bows he related his story. The governor listened and then meditated in silence. Finally he lifted his head.
“Shining needs more than strength of youth,” he said gravely. “Ah, that I should have forgotten the well-
known saying, “with the crown of snow, there cometh wisdom!” That very hour the cruel law was
abolished, and custom drifted into as far a past that only legends remain.