Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Protest"

To sin by silence when we should protest 
makes cowards out of men. The human race 
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised 
Against injustice, ignorance and lust, 
The inquisition yet would serve the law. 
And guillotines decide our least disputes. 
The few who dare must speak and speak again, 
To right the wrongs of many.

Wislawa Szymborska: The Turn of the Century

It was supposed to be better than the others, our 20th century, 
But it won't have time to prove it. 
Its years are numbered, 
its step unsteady, 
its breath short. 

Already too much has happened 
that was not supposed to happen. 
What was to come about 
has not. 

Spring was to be on its way, 
and happiness, among other things. 

Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys. 
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie. 

Certain misfortunes 
were never to happen again 
such as war and hunger and so forth. 

These were to be respected: 
the defenselessness of the defenseless, 
trust and the like. 

Whoever wanted to enjoy the world 
faces an impossible task. 

Stupidity is not funny. 
Wisdom isn't jolly. 

Hope 
Is no longer the same young girl 
et cetera. Alas. 

God was at last to believe in man: 
good and strong, 
but good and strong 
are still two different people. 

How to live -- someone asked me this in a letter, 
someone I had wanted 
to ask that very thing. 

Again and as always, 
and as seen above 
there are no questions more urgent 
than the naive ones. 
 

Trevor Noah

When I was learning how to box, that was the number one thing my trainer taught me. He said, 'You can't get angry at every single time I hit you because that's why you're here. You're going to get hit. Acknowledge that you're going to get hit and now focus on how you're going to fight properly.' And living through the times is exactly the right way to put it because I have seen a slice of this only on a different continent

Jennifer Pahlka, founder Code for America

It's supposed to be hard. We are in this together. It is up to us.

Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

W.H. Auden - In Memory of W. B. Yeats

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902

Our movement is belated, and like all things too long postponed, now gets on everybody's nerves. 

Dorothy Parker, "Sanctuary"

My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Tyler Brewington, Calling the Water

once I stepped barefoot into something flyblown

it was a great lesson in inattention

Richard Brautigan, Watermelon Sugar

Megan Smith, United States CTO

Go where you are rare.

George Eliot

"You must love your work and not be always looking over the edge of it...You must not be ashamed of your work and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else."

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.

Ellen Bass, "Enough"

          Enough seen….Enough had....Enough…
                                       —Arthur Rimbaud

No. It will never be enough. Never
enough wind clamoring in the trees,
sun and shadow handling each leaf, never enough clang
of my neighbor hammering,
the iron nails, relenting wood, sound waves
lapping over roofs, never enough
bees purposeful at the throats
of lilies. How could we be replete
with the flesh of ripe tomatoes, the unique
scent of their crushed leaves. It would take many
births to be done with the thatness of that.

Oh blame life. That we just want more.
Summer rain. Mud. A cup of tea.
Our teeth, our eyes. A baby in a stroller.
Another spoonful of crème brûlée, sweet burnt crust crackling.
And hot showers, oh lovely, lovely hot showers.

Today was a good day.
My mother-in-law sat on the porch, eating crackers and cheese
with a watered-down margarita
and though her nails are no longer stop-light red
and she can’t remember who’s alive and dead,
still, this was a day
with no weeping, no unstoppable weeping.

Last night, through the small window of my laptop,
I watched a dying man kill himself in Switzerland.
He wore a blue shirt and snow was falling
onto a small blue house, onto dark needles of pine and fir.
He didn’t step outside to feel the snow on his face.
He sat at a table with his wife and drank poison.

Online I found a plastic bag complete with Velcro
and a hole for a tube to a propane tank. I wouldn’t have to
move our Weber. I could just slide
down the stucco to the flagstones, where the healthy
weeds are sprouting through the cracks.
Maybe it wouldn’t be half-bad
to go out looking at the yellowing leaves of the old camellia.
And from there I could see the chickens scratching—
if we still have chickens then. And yet…

this little hat of life, how will I bear
to take it off while I can still reach up? Snug woolen watch cap,
lacy bonnet, yellow cloche with the yellow veil
I wore the Easter I turned thirteen when my mother let me promenade
with Tommy Spagnola on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

Oxygen, oxygen, the cry of the body—and you always want to give it
what it wants. But I must say no—
enough, enough
with more tenderness
than I have ever given to a lover, the gift
of the nipple hardening under my fingertip, more
tenderness than to my newborn,
when I held her still flecked
with my blood. I’ll say the most gentle refusal
to this dear dumb animal and tighten
the clasp around my throat that once was kissed and kissed
until the blood couldn’t rest in its channel, but rose
to the surface like a fish that couldn’t wait to be caught.

C. D. Wright, Op Ed

I believe in a hardheaded art, an unremitting, unrepentant practice of one’s own faith in the word in one’s own obstinate terms. I believe the word was made good from the start; it remains so to this second. I believe words are golden as goodness is golden. Even the humble word brush gives off a scratch of light. There is not much poetry from which I feel barred, whether it is arcane or open in the extreme. I attempt to run the gamut because I am pulled by the extremes. I believe the word used wrongly distorts the world. I hold to hard distinctions of right and wrong.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/postscript-c-d-wright-1949-2016

Collette sez

Who said you should be happy? Do your work.