The Giant Book of Poetry (2006)

by William H. Roetzheim

  finish forever my pain?

  Here in the hellish glare

  why must I suffer so?

  Is it God doesn’t care?

  Is it God doesn’t know?

  Oh, to be killed outright,

  clean in the clash of the fight!

  That is a golden death,

  that is a boon; but this …

  drawing an anguished breath

  under a hot abyss,

  under a stooping sky

  of seething, sulphurous fire,

  scorching me up as I lie

  here on the wire … the wire … .

  Hasten, O God, Thy night!

  Hide from my eyes the sight

  of the body I stare and see

  shattered so hideously.

  I can’t believe that it’s mine.

  My body was white and sweet,

  flawless and fair and fine,

  shapely from head to feet;

  oh no, I can never be

  the thing of horror I see

  under the rifle fire,

  trussed on the wire … the wire. …

  Of night and of death I dream;

  night that will bring me peace,

  coolness and starry gleam,

  stillness and death’s release:

  ages and ages have passed,—

  lo! it is night at last.

  Night! but the guns roar out.

  Night! but the hosts attack.

  Red and yellow and black

  geysers of doom upspout.

  Silver and green and red

  star-shells hover and spread.

  Yonder off to the right

  fiercely kindles the fight;

  roaring near and more near,

  thundering now in my ear;

  close to me, close … Oh, hark!

  Someone moans in the dark.

  I hear, but I cannot see,

  I hear as the rest retire,

  someone is caught like me,

  caught on the wire. … the wire …

  Again the shuddering dawn,

  weird and wicked and wan;

  again, and I’ve not yet gone.

  The man whom I heard is dead.

  Now I can understand:

  a bullet hole in his head,

  a pistol gripped in his hand.

  Well, he knew what to do,—

  yes, and now I know too … .

  Hark the resentful guns!

  Oh, how thankful am I

  to think my beloved ones

  will never know how I die!

  I’ve suffered more than my share;

  I’m shattered beyond repair;

  I’ve fought like a man the fight,

  and now I demand the right

  (God! how his fingers cling!)

  to do without shame this thing.

  Good! there’s a bullet still;

  now I’m ready to fire;

  blame me, God, if You will,

  here on the wire … the wire . .

  The Ballad of Pious Pete1

  “The North has got him.”—Yukonism.

  I tried to refine that neighbor of mine,

  honest to God, I did.

  I grieved for his fate, and early and late

  I watched over him like a kid.

  I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse

  in every way that I could;

  I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail;

  I plotted and planned for his good.

  By day and by night I strove in men’s sight

  to gather him into the fold,

  with precept and prayer, with hope and despair,

  in hunger and hardship and cold.

  I followed him into Gehennas of sin,

  I sat where the sirens sit;

  in the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul,

  I strove with the powers of the Pit.

  I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town;

  I dragged him from dissolute brawls;

  but I killed the galoot when he started to shoot

  electricity into my walls.

  God knows what I did he should seek to be rid

  of one who would save him from shame.

  God knows what I bore that night when he swore

  and bade me make tracks from his claim.

  I started to tell of the horrors of hell,

  when sudden his eyes lit like coals;

  and “Chuck it,” says he, “don’t persecute me

  with your cant and your saving of souls.”

  I’ll swear I was mild as I’d be with a child,

  but he called me the son of a slut;

  and, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run,

  he threatened my face with the butt.

  So what could I do (I leave it to you)?

  With curses he harried me forth;

  then he was alone, and I was alone,

  and over us menaced the North.

  Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear;

  but between us there rippled the creek;

  and all summer through, with a rancor that grew,

  he would pass me and never would speak.

  Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death

  crept down from the peaks far away;

  the water was still; the twilight was chill;

  the sky was a tatter of gray.

  Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold

  the lights of the witches arose;

  the frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched

  by the stark and cadaverous snows.

  The trees were like lace

  where the star-beams could chase,

  each leaf with a jewel agleam.

  The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped

  us round in a crystalline dream;

  so still I could hear quite loud in my ear

  the swish of the pinions of time;

  so bright I could see, as plain as could be,

  the wings of God’s angels ashine.

  As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look

  to that cabin just over the creek.

  Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad,

  two neighbors who never would speak!

  I knew that full well like the devil in hell

  he was hatching out, early and late,

  a system to bear through the frost-spangled air

  the warm, crimson waves of his hate.

  I only could peer and shudder and fear—

  ‘twas ever so ghastly and still;

  but I knew over there in his lonely despair

  he was plotting me terrible ill.

  I knew that he nursed a malice accurst,

  like the blast of a winnowing flame;

  I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud—

  oh, God! then calamity came.

  Mad! If I’m mad then you too are mad;

  but it’s all in the point of view.

  If you’d looked at them things gallivantin’ on wings,

  all purple and green and blue;

  if you’d noticed them twist, as they mounted and hissed

  like scorpions dim in the dark;

  if you’d seen them rebound with a horrible sound,

  and spitefully spitting a spark;

  if you’d watched It with dread, as it hissed by your bed,

  that thing with the feelers that crawls—

  you’d have settled the brute that attempted to shoot

  electricity into your walls.

  Oh, some they were blue,

  and they slithered right through;

  they were silent and squashy and round;

  and some they were green; they were wriggly and lean;

  they writhed with so hateful a sound.

  My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees;

  my face was a white splash of dread.

  Oh, the Green and the Blue,

  they were gruesome to view;


  but the worst of them all were the Red,

  they came through the door,

  they came through the floor,

  they came through the moss-creviced logs.

  They were savage and dire;

  they were whiskered with fire;

  they bickered like malamute dogs.

  They ravined in rings like iniquitous things;

  they gulped down the Green and the Blue.

  I crinkled with fear whene’er they drew near,

  and nearer and nearer they drew.

  And then came the crown of Horror’s grim crown,

  the monster so loathsomely red.

  Each eye was a pin that shot out and in,

  as, squid-like, it oozed to my bed;

  so softly it crept with feelers that swept

  and quivered like fine copper wire;

  its belly was white with a sulphurous light,

  its jaws were a-drooling with fire.

  It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame,

  but never a wink could I look.

  I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law;

  I fended it off with the Book.

  I was weak—oh, so weak—but I thrilled at its shriek,

  as wildly it fled in the night;

  and deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day.

  (Was ever so welcome the light?)

  I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun;

  to his cabin so softly I slunk.

  My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air,

  all wrapped in a robe in his bunk.

  It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones,

  as feebly he twisted about;

  his gums were so black, and his lips seemed to crack,

  and his teeth all were loosening out.

  ‘Twas a death’s head that peered

  through the tangle of beard;

  ‘twas a face I will never forget;

  sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so

  with their pleadings and anguish, and yet

  as I rested my gaze in a misty amaze

  on the scurvy degenerate wreck,

  I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings,

  then laid I my gun on his neck.

  He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh,

  like a perishing malamute,

  and he says unto me, “I’m converted,” says he;

  “for Christ’s sake, Peter, don’t shoot!”

  …

  They’re taking me out with an escort about,

  and under a sergeant’s care;

  I am humbled indeed, for I’m ’cuffed to a Swede

  that thinks he’s a millionaire.

  But it’s all Gospel true what I’m telling to you—

  up there where the Shadow falls—

  that I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot

  electricity into my walls.

  The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin1

  I

  There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike

  living the life of shame,

  when unto them in the Long, Long Night

  came the man-who-had-no-name;

  bearing his prize of a black fox pelt,

  out of the Wild he came.

  His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam

  when the brown spring freshets flow;

  deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits

  were his somber eyes aglow;

  they knew him far for the fitful man

  who spat forth blood on the snow.

  “Did ever you see such a skin?” quoth he;

  “there’s nought in the world so fine—

  such fullness of fur as black as the night,

  such luster, such size, such shine;

  it’s life to a one-lunged man like me;

  it’s London, it’s women, it’s wine.

  The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox,

  and swore that no man could kill;

  that he who hunted it, soon or late,

  must surely suffer some ill;

  but I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales.

  Ha! Ha! I’m laughing still.

  For look ye, the skin—it’s as smooth as sin,

  and black as the core of the Pit.

  By gun or by trap, whatever the hap,

  I swore I would capture it;

  by star and by star afield and afar,

  I hunted and would not quit.

  For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly,

  and it seemed to fleer at me;

  I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light,

  hearing its evil glee;

  into my dream its eyes would gleam,

  and its shadow would I see.

  It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan

  I had poisoned to excess;

  unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead

  (‘twas as if I shot by guess);

  yet it came by night in the stark moonlight

  to mock at my weariness.

  I tracked it up where the mountains hunch

  like the vertebrae of the world;

  I tracked it down to the death-still pits

  where the avalanche is hurled;

  from the glooms to the sacerdotal snows,

  where the carded clouds are curled.

  From the vastitudes where the world protrudes

  through clouds like seas up-shoaled,

  I held its track till it led me back

  to the land I had left of old—

  the land I had looted many moons.

  I was weary and sick and cold.

  I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase,

  and there and then I swore

  the foul fiend fox might scathless go,

  for I would hunt no more;

  then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise—

  it stood by my cabin door.

  A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom,

  and a vengeful shot that sped;

  a howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse—

  and the demon fox lay dead … .

  yet there was never a sign of wound,

  and never a drop he bled.

  So that was the end of the great black fox,

  and here is the prize I’ve won;

  and now for a drink to cheer me up—

  I’ve mushed since the early sun;

  we’ll drink a toast to the sorry ghost

  of the fox whose race is run.”

  II

  Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike,

  bad as the worst were they;

  in their road-house down by the river-trail

  they waited and watched for prey;

  with wine and song they joyed night long,

  and they slept like swine by day.

  For things were done in the Midnight Sun

  that no tongue will ever tell;

  and men there be who walk earth-free,

  but whose names are writ in hell—

  are writ in flames with the guilty names

  of Fournier and Labelle.

  Put not your trust in a poke of dust

  would ye sleep the sleep of sin;

  for there be those who would rob your clothes

  ere yet the dawn comes in;

  and a prize likewise in a woman’s eyes

  is a peerless black fox skin.

  Put your faith in the mountain cat if you

  lie within his lair;

  trust the fangs of the mother-wolf,

  and the claws of the lead-ripped bear;

  but oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles

  of a dance-hall wench beware!

  Wherefore it was beyond all laws

  that lusts of man restrain,

  a man drank deep and sank to sleep

  never to wake again;

  and the Yukon swallowed through a hole

  the cold corpse of the slain.


  III

  The black fox skin a shadow cast

  from the roof nigh to the floor;

  and sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed,

  and the woman stroked it o’er;

  and the man stood by with a brooding eye,

  and gnashed his teeth and swore.

  When thieves and thugs fall out and fight

  there’s fell arrears to pay;

  and soon or late sin meets its fate,

  and so it fell one day

  that Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike

  fanged up like dogs at bay.

  “The skin is mine, all mine,” she cried;

  “I did the deed alone.”

  “It’s share and share with a guilt-yoked pair,”

  he hissed in a pregnant tone;

  and so they snarled like malamutes

  over a mildewed bone.

  And so they fought, by fear untaught,

  till haply it befell

  one dawn of day she slipped away

  to Dawson town to sell

  the fruit of sin, this black fox skin

  that had made their lives a hell.

  She slipped away as still he lay,

  she clutched the wondrous fur;

  her pulses beat, her foot was fleet,

  her fear was as a spur;

  she laughed with glee, she did not see

  him rise and follow her.

  The bluffs uprear and grimly peer

  far over Dawson town;

  they see its lights a blaze o’ nights

  and harshly they look down;

  they mock the plan and plot of man

  with grim, ironic frown.

  The trail was steep; ‘twas at the time

  when swiftly sinks the snow;

  all honey-combed, the river ice

  was rotting down below;

  the river chafed beneath its rind

  with many a mighty throe.

  And up the swift and oozy drift

  a woman climbed in fear,

  clutching to her a black fox fur

  as if she held it dear;

  and hard she pressed it to her breast—

  then Windy Ike drew near.

  She made no moan—her heart was stone—

  she read his smiling face,

  and like a dream flashed all her life’s

  dark horror and disgrace;

  a moment only—with a snarl

  he hurled her into space.

  She rolled for nigh an hundred feet;

  she bounded like a ball;

  from crag to crag she caromed down

  through snow and timber fall; …

  a hole gaped in the river ice;

  the spray flashed—that was all.

  A bird sang for the joy of spring,

  so piercing sweet and frail;

  and blinding bright the land was dight

  in gay and glittering mail;

  and with a wondrous black fox skin

  a man slid down the trail.

  IV

  A wedge-faced man there was who ran

  along the river bank,