The Giant Book of Poetry (2006)

by William H. Roetzheim

To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust

  or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;

  they looked to me like Red-Head Sammy

  stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”

  How could I till my forty acres

  not to speak of getting more,

  with a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos

  stirred in my brain by crows and robins

  and the creak of a wind-mill—only these?

  And I never started to plow in my life

  that some one did not stop in the road

  and take me away to a dance or picnic.

  I ended up with forty acres;

  I ended up with a broken fiddle—

  and a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,

  and not a single regret.

  Silas Dement2

  It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled

  with new-fallen frost.

  It was midnight and not a soul abroad.

  Out of the chimney of the court-house

  a gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased

  the northwest wind.

  I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs

  and leaned it against the frame of the trap-door

  in the ceiling of the portico,

  and I crawled under the roof amid the rafters

  and flung among the seasoned timbers

  a lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.

  Then I came down and slunk away.

  In a little while the fire-bell rang—

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  And the Spoon River ladder company

  came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water

  on the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter,

  higher and brighter, till the walls fell in,

  and the limestone columns where Lincoln stood

  crashed like trees when the woodman fells them…

  when I came back from Joliet

  there was a new court house with a dome.

  For I was punished like all who destroy

  the past for the sake of the future.

  Tom Beatty1

  I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney

  or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,

  for I tried the rights of property,

  although by lamp-light, for thirty years,

  in that poker room in the opera house.

  And I say to you that Life’s a gambler

  head and shoulders above us all.

  No mayor alive can close the house.

  And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;

  you’ll not get back your money.

  He makes the percentage hard to conquer;

  he stacks the cards to catch your weakness

  and not to meet your strength.

  And he gives you seventy years to play:

  for if you cannot win in seventy

  you cannot win at all.

  So, if you lose, get out of the room—

  get out of the room when your time is up.

  It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards,

  and curse your losses, leaden-eyed,

  whining to try and try.

  Roka (1868 – 1927)

  Winter rain deepens2

  Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

  Winter rain deepens

  lichened letters on the grave …

  and my old sadness

  Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)

  Amaryllis1

  Once, when I wandered in the woods alone,

  an old man tottered up to me and said,

  “Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made

  for Amaryllis.” There was in the tone

  of his complaint such quaver and such moan

  that I took pity on him and obeyed,

  and long stood looking where his hands had laid

  an ancient woman, shrunk to skin and bone.

  Far out beyond the forest I could hear

  the calling of loud progress, and the bold

  incessant scream of commerce ringing clear;

  but though the trumpets of the world were glad,

  it made me lonely and it made me sad

  to think that Amaryllis had grown old.

  An Old Story2

  Strange that I did not know him then.

  that friend of mine!

  I did not even show him then

  one friendly sign;

  but cursed him for the ways he had

  to make me see

  my envy of the praise he had

  for praising me.

  I would have rid the earth of him

  once, in my pride…

  I never knew the worth of him

  until he died.

  Haunted House1

  Here was a place where none would ever come

  for shelter, save as we did from the rain.

  We saw no ghost, yet once outside again

  each wondered why the other should be so dumb;

  and ruin, and to our vision it was plain

  where thrift, outshivering fear, had let remain

  some chairs that were like skeletons of home.

  There were no trackless footsteps on the floor

  above us, and there were no sounds elsewhere.

  But there was more than sound; and there was more

  than just an axe that once was in the air

  between us and the chimney, long before

  our time. So townsmen said who found her there.

  John Evereldown2

  “Where are you going to-night, to-night,—

  where are you going, John Evereldown?

  There’s never the sign of a star in sight,

  nor a lamp that’s nearer than Tilbury Town.

  Why do you stare as a dead man might?

  Where are you pointing away from the light?

  And where are you going to-night, to-night,—

  where are you going, John Evereldown?”

  “Right through the forest, where none can see,

  there’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.

  The men are asleep,— or awake, may be,—

  but the women are calling John Evereldown.

  Ever and ever they call for me,

  and while they call can a man be free?

  So right through the forest, where none can see,

  there’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.”

  “But why are you going so late, so late,—

  why are you going, John Evereldown?

  Though the road be smooth and the path be straight,

  there are two long leagues to Tilbury Town.

  Come in by the fire, old man, and wait!

  Why do you chatter out there by the gate?

  And why are you going so late, so late,—

  why are you going, John Evereldown?”

  “I follow the women wherever they call,—

  that’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.

  God knows if I pray to be done with it all,

  but God is no friend to John Evereldown.

  So the clouds may come and the rain may fall,

  the shadows may creep and the dead men crawl,—

  but I follow the women wherever they call,

  and that’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.”

  Karma1

  Christmas was in the air and all was well

  with him, but for a few confusing flaws

  in divers of God’s images. Because

  a friend of his would neither buy nor sell,

  was he to answer for the axe that fell?

  He pondered; and the reason for it was,

  partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus

  upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

  Acknowledging an improvident surprise,

  he magnified a fancy that he wished

  the friend whom he had wrecked were here again.

  Not sure of that, he found a compromise;

&nb
sp; and from the fullness of his heart he fished

  a dime for Jesus who had died for men.

  Mr. Flood’s Party1

  Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night

  over the hill between the town below

  and the forsaken upland hermitage

  that held as much as he should ever know

  on earth again of home, paused warily.

  The road was his with not a native near;

  and Eben, having leisure, said aloud,

  for no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

  “Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon

  again, and we may not have many more;

  the bird is on the wing, the poet says,

  and you and I have said it here before.

  Drink to the bird.” He raised up to the light

  the jug that he had gone so far to fill,

  and answered huskily: “Well, Mr. Flood,

  since you propose it, I believe I will.”

  Alone, as if enduring to the end

  a valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,

  he stood there in the middle of the road

  like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn.

  Below him, in the town among the trees,

  where friends of other days had honored him,

  a phantom salutation of the dead

  rang thinly till old Eben’s eyes were dim.

  Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child

  down tenderly, fearing it may awake,

  he set the jug down slowly at his feet

  with trembling care, knowing that most things break;

  and only when assured that on firm earth

  it stood, as the uncertain lives of men

  assuredly did not, he paced away,

  and with his hand extended paused again:

  “Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this

  in a long time; and many a change has come

  to both of us, I fear, since last it was

  we had a drop together. Welcome home!”

  Convivially returning with himself,

  again he raised the jug up to the light;

  and with an acquiescent quaver said:

  “Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

  Only a very little, Mr. Flood—

  for auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.”

  So, for the time, apparently it did,

  and Eben evidently thought so too;

  for soon amid the silver loneliness

  of night he lifted up his voice and sang,

  secure, with only two moons listening,

  until the whole harmonious landscape rang—

  “For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,

  the last word wavered; and the song being done,

  he raised again the jug regretfully

  and shook his head, and was again alone.

  There was not much that was ahead of him,

  and there was nothing in the town below—

  where strangers would have shut the many doors

  that many friends had opened long ago.

  Reuben Bright1

  Because he was a butcher and thereby

  did earn an honest living (and did right),

  I would not have you think that Reuben Bright

  was any more a brute than you or I;

  for when they told him that his wife must die,

  he stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,

  and cried like a great baby half that night,

  and made the women cry to see him cry.

  And after she was dead, and he had paid

  the singers and the sexton and the rest,

  he packed a lot of things that she had made

  most mournfully away in an old chest

  of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs

  in with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.

  Richard Cory2

  Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

  we people on the pavement looked at him:

  he was a gentleman from sole to crown,

  clean favored, and imperially slim.

  And he was always quietly arrayed,

  and he was always human when he talked;

  but still he fluttered pulses when he said,

  “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

  And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

  and admirably schooled in every grace;

  in fine we thought that he was everything

  to make us wish that we were in his place.

  So on we worked, and waited for the light,

  and went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

  and Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

  went home and put a bullet through his head.

  Souvenir1

  A vanished house that for an hour I knew

  by some forgotten chance when I was young

  had once a glimmering window overhung

  with honeysuckle wet with evening dew.

  Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,

  and shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung

  ferociously; and over me, among

  the moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.

  Somewhere within there were dim presences

  of days that hovered and of years gone by.

  I waited, and between their silences

  there was an evanescent faded noise;

  and though a child, I knew it was the voice

  of one whose occupation was to die.

  Supremacy2

  There is a drear and lonely tract of hell

  from all the common gloom removed afar:

  a flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,

  whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.

  I walked among them and I knew them well:

  men I had slandered on life’s little star

  for churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar

  upon their brows of woe ineffable.

  But as I went majestic on my way,

  into the dark they vanished, one by one,

  till, with a shaft of God’s eternal day,

  the dream of all my glory was undone,—

  and, with a fool’s importunate dismay,

  I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

  The Dead Village1

  Here there is death. But even here, they say,—

  here where the dull sun shines this afternoon

  as desolate as ever the dead moon

  did glimmer on dead Sardis,—men were gay;

  and there were little children here to play,

  with small soft hands that once did keep in tune

  the strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon

  the change came, and the music passed away.

  Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things,—

  no life, no love, no children, and no men;

  and over the forgotten place there clings

  the strange and unrememberable light

  that is in dreams. The music failed, and then

  God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.

  The Growth of “Lorraine”2

  I.

  While I stood listening, discreetly dumb,

  Lorraine was having the last word with me:

  “I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see

  some creatures are born fortunate, and some

  are born to be found out and overcome—

  born to be slaves, to let the rest go free;

  and if I’m one of them (and I must be)

  you may as well forget me and go home.

  You tell me not to say these things, I know,

  but I should never try to be content:

  I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow.

  Some could have done it—some girls have the stuff;

  but I can’t do it—I don’t know enough.

  I’m going
to the devil.” And she went.

  II

  I did not half believe her when she said

  that I should never hear from her again;

  nor when I found a letter from Lorraine,

  was I surprised or grieved at what I read:

  “Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead.

  you are too far away to make me stop.

  They say that one drop—think of it, one drop!—

  will be enough; but I’ll take five instead.

  You do not frown because I call you friend;

  for I would have you glad that I still keep

  your memory, and even at the end—

  impenitent, sick, shattered—cannot curse

  the love that flings, for better or for worse,

  this worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.”

  The Mill1

  The miller’s wife had waited long,

  the tea was cold, the fire was dead;

  and there might yet be nothing wrong

  in how he went and what he said:

  “There are no millers any more,”

  was all that she had heard him say;

  and he had lingered at the door

  so long that it seemed yesterday.

  Sick with a fear that had no form

  she knew that she was there at last;

  and in the mill there was a warm

  and mealy fragrance of the past.

  What else there was would only seem

  to say again what he had meant;

  and what was hanging from a beam

  would not have heeded where she went.

  And if she thought it followed her,

  she may have reasoned in the dark

  that one way of the few there were

  would hide her and would leave no mark:

  black water, smooth above the weir

  like starry velvet in the night,

  though ruffled once, would soon appear

  the same as ever to the sight.

  The Pity of the Leaves1

  Vengeful across the cold November moors,

  loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak

  sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,

  reverberant through lonely corridors.

  The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,

  words out of lips that were no more to speak—