Written by
Anne Sexton |
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all.
.
.
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death.
Or say what you meant,
you coward.
.
.
this baby that I bleed.
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
A wise old age anticipate,
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
No Khan’s extravagant estate.
No crown annoyed his honest head,
No fiddlers three were called or needed;
For two disastrous heirs instead
Made music more than ever three did.
Bereft of her with whom his life
Was harmony without a flaw,
He took no other for a wife,
Nor sighed for any that he saw;
And if he doubted his two sons,
And heirs, Alexis and Evander,
He might have been as doubtful once
Of Robert Burns and Alexander.
Alexis, in his early youth,
Began to steal—from old and young.
Likewise Evander, and the truth
Was like a bad taste on his tongue.
Born thieves and liars, their affair
Seemed only to be tarred with evil—
The most insufferable pair
Of scamps that ever cheered the devil.
The world went on, their fame went on,
And they went on—from bad to worse;
Till, goaded hot with nothing done,
And each accoutred with a curse,
The friends of Old King Cole, by twos,
And fours, and sevens, and elevens,
Pronounced unalterable views
Of doings that were not of heaven’s.
And having learned again whereby
Their baleful zeal had come about,
King Cole met many a wrathful eye
So kindly that its wrath went out—
Or partly out.
Say what they would,
He seemed the more to court their candor;
But never told what kind of good
Was in Alexis and Evander.
And Old King Cole, with many a puff
That haloed his urbanity,
Would smoke till he had smoked enough,
And listen most attentively.
He beamed as with an inward light
That had the Lord’s assurance in it;
And once a man was there all night,
Expecting something every minute.
But whether from too little thought,
Or too much fealty to the bowl,
A dim reward was all he got
For sitting up with Old King Cole.
“Though mine,” the father mused aloud,
“Are not the sons I would have chosen,
Shall I, less evilly endowed,
By their infirmity be frozen?
“They’ll have a bad end, I’ll agree,
But I was never born to groan;
For I can see what I can see,
And I’m accordingly alone.
With open heart and open door,
I love my friends, I like my neighbors;
But if I try to tell you more,
Your doubts will overmatch my labors.
“This pipe would never make me calm,
This bowl my grief would never drown.
For grief like mine there is no balm
In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town.
And if I see what I can see,
I know not any way to blind it;
Nor more if any way may be
For you to grope or fly to find it.
“There may be room for ruin yet,
And ashes for a wasted love;
Or, like One whom you may forget,
I may have meat you know not of.
And if I’d rather live than weep
Meanwhile, do you find that surprising?
Why, bless my soul, the man’s asleep!
That’s good.
The sun will soon be rising.
”
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Old Man Death's a lousy heel who will not play the game:
Let Graveyard yawn and doom down crash, he'll sneer and turn away.
But when the sky with rapture rings and joy is like a flame,
Then Old Man Death grins evilly, and swings around to slay.
Jack Duval was my chosen pal in the ranks of the Reckless Men.
Thick as thieves they used to say, and it may be that we were:
Where the price of life is a naked knife and dammed are nine in ten,
It doesn't do to be curious in the Legion Etrangère.
So when it came to a hidden shame our mugs were zippered tight;
He never asked me what I'd done, and he would never tell;
But though like men we revelled, when it came to bloody fight
I knew that I could bank on him clear to the hubs of hell.
They still tell how we held the Fort back on the blasted bled,
And blazed from out the shambles till the fagged relief arrived.
"The garrison are slaughtered all," the Captain grimly said:
Piped Jack: "Give us a slug of hooch and say that TWO survived.
"
Then was that time we were lost, canteen and carcase dry,
As on we staggered with the thought: "Here's where our story ends.
"
Ten desert days delirious, when black against the sky,
We saw a line of camels, and the Arabs were our friends.
And last of all, the lurid night we crashed the gates of hell
And stemmed the Teuton torrent as it roared on every side;
And we were left in blood and mud to rot on the Moselle -
Two lacerated Legionaires, whom all supposed had died.
Three times death thought to take us and three times he stayed his hand;
But when we left the Legion what a happy pair we were,
Then reckless roving up and down the sunny land,
I found Jack eating bouillabaisse back on the Cannebière.
"Next week I wed," he gaily said, "the sweetest girl on earth.
I wonder why did Death pass by just then and turn to gloat?
"Oh I'm so happy! You must come and join us in our mirth.
".
.
.
Death struck .
.
.
Jack gasped and choked and - died:
A fishbone in his throat.
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