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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
May Swenson
May Swenson
May Swenson was born Anna Thilda May Swenson on May 28, 1913...
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FURTHER READING
Poems about Earth
Earth Took of Earth
by Anonymous, read by Galway Kinnell
Elegy in Limestone
by CJ Evans
Fiddler Jones
by Edgar Lee Masters
Gospel
by Philip Levine
Hamatreya
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
He Stood
by Aaron Shurin
Prologue of the Earthly Paradise
by William Morris
the earth is a living thing
by Lucille Clifton
The Earth Opens and Welcomes You
by Abdellatif Laâbi
To Earthward
by Robert Frost
[Toward the empty earth]
by Osip Mandelstam, read by Jean Valentine
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Earth Your Dancing Place

 
by May Swenson

Beneath heaven's vault
remember always walking
through halls of cloud
down aisles of sunlight
or through high hedges
of the green rain
walk in the world
highheeled with swirl of cape
hand at the swordhilt
of your pride
Keep a tall throat
Remain aghast at life

Enter each day
as upon a stage
lighted and waiting
for your step
Crave upward as flame
have keenness in the nostril
Give your eyes
to agony or rapture

Train your hands
as birds to be
brooding or nimble
Move your body
as the horses
sweeping on slender hooves
over crag and prairie
with fleeing manes
and aloofness of their limbs

Take earth for your own large room
and the floor of the earth
carpeted with sunlight
and hung round with silver wind
for your dancing place






From Collected Poems by May Swenson. Copyright © 2013 by The Literary Estate of May Swenson. Reprinted by permission of The Library of America. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on June 6, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
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