Ancestors by Ada Limón

I've come here from the rocks, the bonelike chert,     obsidian, lava rock. I've come here from the trees-chesnut, bay laurel, toyon, acacia, redwood, cedar

one thousand oaks    that bend with moss and old man's beard.
I was born on a green couch on Carriger Road between    the vineyards and the horse pasture.

I don't remember what I first saw, the brick of light     that unhinged me from the beginning. I don't remember

my brother's face, my mother, my father.
    Later, I remember leaves, through car windows, 
through bedroom windows, through the classroom window, 
the way they shaded and patterned the ground, all that    power from roots. Imagine you must survive

without running? I've come from the lacing patterns of leaves, 
    I do not know where else I belong.

          

The Mad Pomegranate Tree by Odysseus Elytis

In these all-white courtyards where the south wind blows
Whistling through vaulted arcades, tell me, is it the pomegranate tree
That leaps in the light, scattering its fruitful laughter
With windy willfulness and whispering, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That quivers with foliage newly born at dawn 
Raising high its colours in a shiver of triumph?

On plains where the naked girls awake,
When the harvest clover with their light brown arms
Roaming round the borders of their dreams, tell me,  is  it the mad pomegranate tree
Unsuspecting, that puts the lights in their verdant baskets
That floods their names with the singing of birds, tell me
Is it the mad pomegranate tree that combats the cloudy skies of the world?

On the day that it adorns itself in jealousy with seven kinds of feathers, 

Girding the eternal sun with a thousand blinding prisms

Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree

That seizes on the run a horse's mane of a hundred lashes, 

Never sad and never grumbling, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree

That cries out the new hop now dawning?

Tell me, is that the pomegranate tree waving in the distance, 

Fluttering a handkerchief of leaves of cool flame, 

A sea near birth with a thousand ships and more, 

With waves that a thousand times and more set out and go

To unscented shores, tell me, is it the pomegranate tree

That creaks the rigging aloft in the lucid air?

High as can be, with the blue bunch of grapes that flares and celebrates

Arrogant, full of danger- tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree 

That shatters with light the demon's tempest in the middle of the world

That spreads far as can be the saffron ruffle of day

Richly embroider with scattered songs- tell me, is it the pomegranate tree

That hastily unfastens the silk apparel of day?

In petticoats of April first and cicadas of the feast of mid-August

Tell me, that which plays, that which rages, that which can entice

Shaking out of threats the evil black darkness

Spilling in the sun's embrace intoxicating birds

Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things

On the breast of deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree