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larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
I Sit and Sew, Alice Dunbar Nelson
I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?
Alice Ruth Moore was born in 1875 in New Orleans to mixed-race parents, and is better known today as a journalist and activist than for her poetry and fiction, or for that matter for being a teacher. Her first husband was poet and novelist Paul Lawrence Dunbar (married 1898-1906, when he died, though she left him in 1902 for being abusive) and her third was journalist and activist Robert J. Nelson (married 1914-1935, when she died).
---L.
Subject quote from War Pigs, Black Sabbath.
I Sit and Sew, Alice Dunbar Nelson
I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?
Alice Ruth Moore was born in 1875 in New Orleans to mixed-race parents, and is better known today as a journalist and activist than for her poetry and fiction, or for that matter for being a teacher. Her first husband was poet and novelist Paul Lawrence Dunbar (married 1898-1906, when he died, though she left him in 1902 for being abusive) and her third was journalist and activist Robert J. Nelson (married 1914-1935, when she died).
---L.
Subject quote from War Pigs, Black Sabbath.
no subject
Date: 18 August 2025 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 August 2025 02:40 pm (UTC)