Nothing Personal by James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed,
forever and forever and forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,

and we are responsible to them because
we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another, 
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

[...] 

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

[...]

The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

Brew us the magic in which all limits dissolve,
spirit forever bent to the fire!
The fathomless limit of evil, first, which resolves,
also around those who are resting and do not stir.

Dissolve with a few drops whatever excludes in the limit

of the ages, which makes our past wisdom a fraud;

for how deeply we have absorbed the Athenian sunlight

and the mystery of the Egyptian falcon or god.

Don't rest until the boundary that keeps the sexes 

in meaningless conflict has disappeared.

Open up childhood and the wombs of more truly expectant

generous mothers so that, shaming all that is empty,

and not confused by the hindering wood, 

they may give birth to future rivers, augmenting the sea.

-Rainer Maria Rilke