If you were born calm, then keep on calmly.

Every room you come into, come in slowly with a smile,

Calmly. Linger. Speak of the others who will be there

Next time, or in a little while.

If God made you to be angry, be angry.

For God's sake, if you hate a man, hurt him.

Hurry your errands. Shout. Curse. Blaze.

Try for a fiery good out of ashen days.

If a house rots, or a dog starves, or the law is absurd,

Show it. Never pocket a stone. Throw it.

And let the proud and plain and quiet

Be quiet and be proud

And never speak aloud.

Be old, if you are old, your age your own.

If you are tired in the world, or lost, or cold,

Howl till you are found and warm and fed

Or dead. A man said, Live life near the bone.

If you were born full of joy, if you love walking,

If you talk midnight down and bring in the dawn with music,

Branching day by day in the love of good companions,

Then go so.

If you breathe your own house, hear your books,

Wear time like the sun's brown on the back of your own hand,

If you think alone like the wind across your age,

Or see your country from ten thousand feet up in summer air,

Then go so. Be your joy.

Joy is an easy word to say,

But it cuts like hunger.

Joy was never most of any day,

But it lasts, like anger.

It is not too late now, ever or now. It is time,

Taking the world's night in one hand, and in one your light,

To mix them, mould them, burn, change them, cry

Your kind of joy, and know why.

Let women who teach children, women who love men,

Boys who use their bodies to climb cliffs and swim,

With living words make living real,

And men who speak color, think history, act in steel,

Or bend or break or build our earth against our weather,

Speak,

All the joyful all together.