Woman work By Maya Angelou

Woman work

I, ve got the children to tend

The clothes to mend

The floor to mop

The flood to shop

Then chicken to fry

The baby to dry

I got company to feed

The garden to weed

I’ve got the shirts to press

The tots to dress

The cane to be cut

I got to clean up this hut

Shine on me, Sunshine

Rain on me, rain

Fall softly, dewdrops

And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here

With your fiercest wind

Let me float across the sky

Till I can rest again.

Fall gently, snow flakes

Cover me with white

Cold icy kisses and

Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky

Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone

Star shine, moon glow

You’re all that I can call my own.

By (Maya Angelou)

American (black). Born in St.Louies, 4 April, 1928 . educated at schools in Arkansas and California. Music privately, but studied dance with Martha Graham et al, and drama with frank silvera et al. Dancer, actress, singer, composer, author, poet, playwright, journalist, teacher, and TV host and interviewer. Without counting American-English, She speak 5 other different languages, Italian, french, Spanish, Arabic and F anti. Associate editor arab observer Cairo, feature editor African Review Accra. Since 1981, Renold Professor Wake Forest University. She has composed poetry from the particular, and the rhythm she knows, and changes of rhythm become a rhythm, the upsets and re-starts in an unsteady state of soul which every life, in our times, hard times, has experienced in some place or other. When we read her poetry we share the sense of it, hearing, we seem to listen to ourselves. Very appropriately, Angelou,s first volume of autobiography was published as: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1970). In 1961. Kennedy.  Invited Robert Frost; in 1993. Clinton, Maya Angelou, to recite their poems at their respective Inaugurals, as Presidents. Great honour. Her 103   -   line fre4e verse “Morning-in-their-eyes” stirring poems ends:

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister’s eyes. Into

Your brother’s face. Your country.

And say simply

Very simply                                     with hope.                                      

Good Morning

Note

A woman gives vent to her disgust for the dull drab life of doing domestic chores. But the suppressed her capacity to indulge in dreams of an ideal life. She yearns to participate in nature around her. She longs for the blessings of sunshine and rain to give her sustenance and strength to live. She wishes to lose and fine herself in nature-‘mountain, oceans, leaf and stone, star shine , moon glow’- to give a touch of joy and poetry to her ordinary prosaic life.