Live not for Battles Won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along. - Gwendolyn Brooks

Surely — But I am very off from that.
From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrow
that was my clean naivete and my faith.
This morning, men deliver wounds and death.
They will deliver death and wounds tomorrow.
And I doubt all. You. Or a violet.

"Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along."

Since a man must bring
To music what his mother spanked him for
When he was two: bits of forgotten hate,
Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts:
The little dream his father humored: the thing
His sister did for money: what he ate
For breakfast — and for dinner twenty years
Ago last autumn: all his skipped desserts.