We’d like to celebrate today’s International Women’s Day
by sharing with you the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou.
Let’s never forget to keep rising,
most certainly not in times like these,
until women’s day is every day – everywhere!
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Source: POETRY FOUNDATION
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise
Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise” from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.
Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou
Do you know who founded the International Women’s Day and when? What color symbolizes the day and is there an International Men’s Day as well? The BBC has put together an interesting overview of all important facts behind the International Women’s Day, to read the article click here.