Spoon River Anthology Part 9

A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.

For years I was his mistress--no one knew.

I learned from him the parasite cunning With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.

All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men.

Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.

His sister called me his mistress; And Daniel wrote me: "Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!"

But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs.

My Lesbian friend next took a hand.

She hated Daniel's sister.

And Daniel despised her midget husband.

And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust: I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit!

But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me.

"Why not stay in the city just as we have?" he asked.

Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse In the arms of my dilettante friend.

Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife, My Lesbian friend and everyone.

If Daniel had only shot me dead!

Instead of stripping me naked of lies A harlot in body and soul.

Thomas Rhodes

VERY well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Pet.i.ts, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes-- You found with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.

While we, seekers of earth's treasures Getters and h.o.a.rders of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, Even to the end.

Penniwit, the Artist

I LOST my patronage in Spoon River From trying to put my mind in the camera To catch the soul of the person.

The very best picture I ever took Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.

He sat upright and had me pause Till he got his cross-eye straight.

Then when he was ready he said "all right."

And I yelled "overruled" and his eye turned up.

And I caught him just as he used to look When saying "I except."

Jim Brown

WHILE I was handling Dom Pedro I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are For singing "Turkey in the straw" or "There is a fountain filled with blood"-- (Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord).

For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land; For skipping the light fantastic, or pa.s.sing the plate; For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; For men, or for money; For the people or against them.

This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, Headed by Ben Pantier's wife, Went to the Village trustees, And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, To a barn outside of the corporation, On the ground that it corrupted public morals.

Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day-- They thought it a slam on colts.

Robert Davidson

I GREW spiritually fat living off the souls of men.

If I saw a soul that was strong I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.

The shelters of friends.h.i.+p knew my cunning For where I could steal a friend I did so.

And wherever I could enlarge my power By undermining ambition, I did so, Thus to make smooth my own.

And to triumph over other souls, Just to a.s.sert and prove my superior strength, Was with me a delight, The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.

Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.

But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.

I collapsed at last with a shriek.

Remember the acorn; It does not devour other acorns.

Elsa Wertman

I WAS a peasant girl from Germany, Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.

And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's.

On a summer's day when she was away He stole into the kitchen and took me Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, I turning my head. Then neither of us Seemed to know what happened.

And I cried for what would become of me.

And cried and cried as my secret began to show.

One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, And would make no trouble for me, And, being childless, would adopt it.

(He had given her a farm to be still. ) So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, As if it were going to happen to her.

And all went well and the child was born-- They were so kind to me.

Later I married Gus Wertman, and years pa.s.sed.

But--at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene-- That was not it. No! I wanted to say: That's my son!

That's my son.

Hamilton Greene

I WAS the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, Of valiant and honorable blood both.

To them I owe all that I became, Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State.

From my mother I inherited Vivacity, fancy, language; From my father will, judgment, logic.

All honor to them For what service I was to the people!

Ernest Hyde

MY mind was a mirror: It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.

In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car, Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.

Then in time Great scratches were made on the mirror, Letting the outside world come in, And letting my inner self look out.

For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, A birth with gains and losses.

The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself.

A mirror scratched reflects no image-- And this is the silence of wisdom.

Roger Heston

OH many times did Ernest Hyde and I Argue about the freedom of the will.