Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Even I, modern woman,  

had such a word  

in my life once upon a time  

of coalblack waistlong  

tresses. Small fierce women  

whose courage seldom flailed,  

who hefted children heavy as  

sacks, spoke dialects, fanned  

the pale fire of ambition  

in the children’s breasts,  

urged on, on past the moment  

of new births, giving  

daughters their determined  

chins, granddaughters  

their secret names of power  

and loud open laughter.