I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled.
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them.
And I hunger.

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry.
I hunger.

My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.
I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack'd fields of other harvesters.

You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,
When Chase Henry voted against the saloons
To revenge himself for being shut off.
But none of you was keen enough
To follow my steps, or trace me home
As Chase's spiritual brother.
Do you remember when I fought
The bank and the courthouse ring,
For pocketing the interest on public funds?
And when I fought our leading citizens
For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?
And when I fought the water-works
For stealing streets and raising rates?

harriet
if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
pointed
to be the madwoman
at the rivers edge
warning
be free or die
and isabell
if i be you
let me in my
sojourning
not forget
to ask my brothers
ain't i a woman too
and
grandmother
if i be you
let me not forget to
work hard
trust the Gods
love my children and
wait.

For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter, the fold
Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense
nor delusion nor dream,

Who knows the heart of the Christian? How does he reason?
What are his measures and balances? Which is his season
For laughter, forbearance or bloodshed, and what devils move him
When he arises to smite us? I do not love him.
He invites the derision of strangers—he enters all places.
Booted, bareheaded he enters. With shouts and embraces
He asks of us news of the household whom we reckon nameless.
Certainly Allah created him forty-fold shameless!

So it is not in the Desert. One came to me weeping—

Had I a heart for falsehood framed,
I ne'er could injure you;
For though your tongue no promise claimed,
Your charms would make me true:
To you no soul shall bear deceit,
No stranger offer wrong;
But friends in all the aged you'll meet,
And lovers in the young.

For when they learn that you have blest
Another with your heart,
They'll bid aspiring passion rest,
And act a brother's part;
Then, lady, dread not here deceit,
Nor fear to suffer wrong;
For friends in all the aged you'll meet,

They're hanging Bill at eight o' clock,
And millions will applaud.
He killed, and so they have to kill,
Such is the will of God.
His brother Tom is on my bed
To keep me comforted.
II
I see his bleary, blotchy face,
I hear his sodden snore.
He plans that he can take Bill's place;
I felt worse than a whore
As in his arms I cried all night,
Thinking of poor Bill's plight.
III
I keep my eyes upon the clock;
It nears the stroke of eight.

And so when he reached my bed
The General made a stand:
"My brave young fellow," he said,
"I would shake your hand."
II
So I lifted my arm, the right,
With never a hand at all;
Only a stump, a sight
Fit to appal.
III
"Well, well. Now that's too bad!
That's sorrowful luck," he said;
"But there! You give me, my lad,
The left instead."
IV
So from under the blanket's rim
I raised and showed him the other,
A snag as ugly and grim
As its ugly brother.
V

Our Jimmy has gone for to live in a tent,
they have grafted him into the Army,
he finally puckered up courage and went,
when they grafted him into the Army.
I told them the child was too young, alas!
At the captains forequarters, they said he would pass,
they'd train him up well in the Infantry class,
so they grafted him into the Army.

Oh, Jimmy, farewell! Your brothers fell way down in Alabammy;
I though they would spare a lone widder's heir,
but they grafted him into the Army.

Dressed up in his unicorn, dear little chap,

It had been four days of no weather
as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors.

They'd closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings
and my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud.

The evening edition carried the magic death of a child
backlit by a construction site sunrise on its front page.

I kept my back to her and fingered the items on the mantle.

Souvenirs only reminded you of buying them.

* * *

The moon hung solid over the boarded-up Hobby Shop.