Spoon River Anthology Part 21

Zilpha Marsh

AT four o'clock in late October I sat alone in the country school-house Back from the road, mid stricken fields, And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, With its open door blurring the shadows With the spectral glow of a dying fire.

In an idle mood I was running the planchette-- All at once my wrist grew limp, And my hand moved rapidly over the board, 'Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled, Who threatened to materialize before me.

I rose and fled from the room bare-headed Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.

And after that the spirits swarmed-- Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt-- Wherever I went, with messages,-- Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.

You talk nonsense to children, don't you?

And suppose I see what you never saw And never heard of and have no word for, I must talk nonsense when you ask me What it is I see!

James Garber

Do you remember, pa.s.ser-by, the path I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house Hasting with swift feet to work through many years?

Take its meaning to heart: You too may walk, after the hills at Miller's Ford Seem no longer far away; Long after you see them near at hand, Beyond four miles of meadow; And after woman's love is silent Saying no more: "l will save you."

And after the faces of friends and kindred Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent, Sad for the look which means: "We cannot help you."

And after you no longer reproach mankind With being in league against your soul's uplifted hands-- Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon To watch with steadfast eye their destinies; After you have these understandings, think of me And of my path, who walked therein and knew That neither man nor woman, neither toil, Nor duty, gold nor power Can ease the longing of the soul, The loneliness of the soul!

Lydia Humphrey

BACK and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm 'Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church.

I know they laughed and thought me queer.

I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, Disdaining me, not seeing me.

But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.

It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets Democratized!

Le Roy Goldman

WHAT will you do when you come to die, If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, And know as you lie there, He is not your friend?"

Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.

Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends.

And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, You who have lost ere you pa.s.s, A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly And knew you all through, and loved you ever, Who would not fail to speak for you, And give G.o.d an intimate view of your soul As only one of your flesh could do it.

That is the hand your hand will reach for, To lead you along the corridor To the court where you are a stranger!

Gustav Richter

AFTER a long day of work in my hot--houses Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side Your dreams may be abruptly ended.

I was among my flowers where some one Seemed to be raising them on trial, As if after-while to be transplanted To a larger garden of freer air.

And I was disembodied vision Amid a light, as it were the sun Had floated in and touched the roof of gla.s.s Like a toy balloon and softly bursted, And etherealized in golden air.

And all was silence, except the splendor Was immanent with thought as clear As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, Could hear a Presence think as he walked Between the boxes pinching off leaves, Looking for bugs and noting values, With an eye that saw it all: "Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good.

Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it?

Dante, too much manure, perhaps.

Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet.

Sh.e.l.ley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying--"

Clouds, eh!--

Arlo Will

DID you ever see an alligator Come up to the air from the mud, Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?

Have you seen the stabled horses at night Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?

Have you ever walked in darkness When an unknown door was open before you And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles Of delicate wax?

Have you walked with the wind in your ears And the sunlight about you And found it suddenly s.h.i.+ne with an inner splendor?

Out of the mud many times Before many doors of light Through many fields of splendor, Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters Like new--fallen snow, Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, And through unnumbered heavens To the final flame!

Captain Orlando Killion

OH, YOU young radicals and dreamers, You dauntless fledglings Who pa.s.s by my headstone, Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army And my faith in G.o.d!

They are not denials of each other.

Go by reverently, and read with sober care How a great people, riding with defiant shouts The centaur of Revolution, Spurred and whipped to frenzy, Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea Over the precipice they were nearing, And fell from his back in precipitate awe To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.

Moved by the same sense of vast reality Of life and death, and burdened as they were With the fate of a race, How was I, a little blasphemer, Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood, To remain a blasphemer, And a captain in the army?

Joseph Dixon

WHO carved this shattered harp on my stone?

I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, Making them sweet again--with tuning fork or without?

Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings To a magic of numbers flying before your thought Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?

Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?

I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches The waves of mingled music and light from afar, The antennae of Thought that listens through utmost s.p.a.ce.

Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over And use me again if I am worthy to use.

Russell Kincaid

IN the last spring I ever knew, In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard Where beyond fields of greenery s.h.i.+mmered The hills at Miller's Ford; Just to muse on the apple tree With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, Never to grow in fruit.

And there was I with my spirit girded By the flesh half dead, the senses numb Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,-- Such phantom blossoms palely s.h.i.+ning Over the lifeless boughs of Time.

O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!

Had I been only a tree to s.h.i.+ver With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, Then I had fallen in the cyclone Which swept me out of the soul's suspense Where it's neither earth nor heaven.

Aaron Hatfield

BETTER than granite, Spoon River, Is the memory-picture you keep of me Standing before the pioneer men and women There at Concord Church on Communion day.

Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth Of Galilee who went to the city And was killed by bankers and lawyers; My voice mingling with the June wind That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; While the white stones in the burying ground Around the Church s.h.i.+mmered in the summer sun.

And there, though my own memories Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow For the sons killed in battle and the daughters And little children who vanished in life's morning, Or at the intolerable hour of noon.