The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives
may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great
heron feeds,
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethough
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

If I Were Another

by Mahmoud Darwish

If I were another on the road, I would not have looked

back, I would have said what one traveler said

to another: Stranger! awaken

the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road

may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued

from our story together: you are so much yourself ... and I am

so much other than myself right here before you!

If I were another I would have belonged to the road,

neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitar

and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts

the traveler to test gravity. I am only

my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.

If I were another on the road, I would have

hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem

would be of water, diaphanous, white,

abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,

and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:

My identity is this expanse!

If I were another on the road, I would have said

to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!

Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—

that’s what my new song would say. Whenever

the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two

on this road: I ... and another!

I Carry Your Heart

e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you.

here is the deepest secret nobody know
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that is keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)