John Zheng's response to my call to read 105 words to celebrate Richard Wright's birthday, September 4, 2013

Jerry,

A nice suggestion or a call you made, and Wright will look over his shoulder to say thank you (see the last haiku pasted below. I am pasting below two sets of 105 words from Wright's haiku that are kind of biographical, which I will forward to my NEH participants for classroom teaching.

Thanks,

John

__________________________

It is September,

The month in which I was born;

And I have no thoughts.

From a cotton field

To magnolia trees,

A bridge of swallows.

A steamboat’s whistle

Was blasted by the spring wind

To another town.

A slow autumn rain:

The sad eyes of my mother

Fill a lonely night.

Don’t they make you sad,

Those wild geese winging southward,

O lonely scarecrow?

From a tenement,

The blue jazz of a trumpet

Weaving autumn mists.

Black men with big brooms

Sweeping streets in falling snow,

Are absorbed by flakes.

In the post office,

A clerk sorting out letters

Hears spring rain falling.

105 words

A September fog

Mute upon the empty porch

Of an empty house.

Autumn moonlight is

Deepening the emptiness

Of a country road.

Is this tiny pond

The great big lake in which

I swam as a boy?

The sad sound of hymns

Flooding on to autumn fields

In hazy moonlight.

My decrepit barn

Sags full of self-consciousness

In this autumn sun.

An empty sickbed:

An indented white pillow

In weak winter sun.

Leaving the doctor,

The whole world looks different

This autumn morning.

Burning out its time,

And timing its own burning,

One lonely candle.

Did somebody call?

Looking over my shoulder:

Massive spring mountains.

105 words