One reasons cats are happier than people is they have no newspapers.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Hunchback Girl: She Thinks of Heaven
by Gwendolyn Brooks
My Father, it is surely a blue place,
And Straight. Right. Regular. Where I shall find
No need for scholarly nonchalance or looks
A little to the left or guards upon the
Heart to halt love that runs without crookedness
Along its crooked corridors. My Father,
It is a planned place surely. Out of coils,
Unscrewed, released, no more to be marvelous,
I shall walk straightly through most proper halls
Proper myself, princess of properness.
And Straight. Right. Regular. Where I shall find
No need for scholarly nonchalance or looks
A little to the left or guards upon the
Heart to halt love that runs without crookedness
Along its crooked corridors. My Father,
It is a planned place surely. Out of coils,
Unscrewed, released, no more to be marvelous,
I shall walk straightly through most proper halls
Proper myself, princess of properness.
Court Musicians
by Joyce Kilmer
As when in summer-scented days gone by
The court-musicians, dressed in velvets gay
And golden silks, would on their gitterns play
And blend their voices with the strings’ love-cry,
So that the princess from her tower on high
Might through the rose-framed window hear their lay,
And make more splendid the resplendent day
By leaning out, her choristers to spy;
So now, with weary voice and violin,
Two court-musicians rend the dusty air.
Their shrill notes pierce the elevated’s din,
And thrill a girl’s heart with a pleasure rare.
For her has sweeter music never been;
They never saw a princess half so fair.
Fourteen Lines 