The Great Valley

How long have you been waiting? Not so long?
I’m glad of that. You found the place at once.
Well, there’s the Campus Martius, when you’re there
You see above this Collis Hortulorum,
A good place for two men like us to meet:
Here’s where luxurious souls have their abodes.
That’s Sallust’s garden there. They do not care
So much about us as some others do.
There is a tolerance comes from being rich,
An urbane soul is fashioned by a villa.
Our faith is not to these a wicked thing,
A deadly superstition as some deem it.
But Mark, my son, there’s Rome below you there—
What temples, arches, under the full moon!
Here let us sit beside this chestnut tree,
And while the soft wind blows out of the sea
Let’s finish up our talks. You must know all
Wherewith to write the story ere I die
Beneath the wrath of Nero. See that light,
Faint like a little candle—I passed there.
That’s one of our poor men, they make us lamps
Wherewith to light the streets and Nero’s gardens.
We shall be lamps they’ll wish to snuff in time.
We met to-night at one Silvanus’ house.
And I was telling them about the night
When in Gethsemane you followed Him,
Having a cloth around your naked body.
And how you laid hold on him, left the cloth
And fled. But when you write this you can say
“A certain young man,” leaving out your name,
You may not wish to have it known ’twas you
Who ran away, as I would like to hide
How I fell into sleep and failed to watch,
And afterwards declared I knew Him not:
But as for me omit no thing. The world
Will gain for seeing me rise out of weakness
To strength, and out of fear to boldness. Time
Has wrought his wonders in me, I am rock,
Let hell beat on me, I shall stand from now!

Then don’t forget the first man that he healed.
There’s deep significance in this, my son,
That first of all he’d take an unclean spirit
And cast it out. Then second was my mother
Cured of her fever, just as you might say:
Be rid of madness, things that tear and plague,
Then cool you of the fever of vain life.
But don’t forget to write how he would say
“Tell no man of this,” say that and no more.
Though I may think he said it lest the crowds
That followed him would take his strength for healing,
And leave no strength for words, let be and write
“Tell no man of this” simply. For you see
These madmen quieted, these lepers cleaned
Had soon to die, all now are dead, perhaps.
And with them ends their good. But what he said
Remains for generations yet to come, with power
To heal and heal. My son, preserve your notes,
Of what I’ve told you, even above your life.
Make many copies lest one script be lost.
I shall not to another tell it all
As I have told it you.

But as for me
What merit have I that I saw and said
“Thou art the Christ?” One sees the thing he sees.
That is a matter of the eye—behold
What is the eye? Is there an Eye Power which
Produces eyes, a primal source of seeing,
An ocean of beholding, as the ocean
Makes rivers, streams and pools, so does this Power
Make eyes? You take an egg and keep it warm
About a day, then break the shell and look:
You’ll find dark spots on either side of what
Will be the head in time, these will be eyes
In season, but just now they cannot see,
Although the Eye Power back of them can see
Both what they are and how to make them eyes
By giving them its quality and strength.
And all the time while these dark spots emerge
From yolk to eyes, this Rome is here no less,
This moon, these stars, this wonder! Take a child
It stares at flowers and tears them, or again
It claws the whiteness of its mother’s breast,
Sees nothing but the things beneath its nose.
The world around it lies here to be seen,
And will be seen from boyhood on to age
In different guises, aspects, richnesses
According to the man, for every man
Sees different from his fellow. What’s an eye?
I say not what’s an eye, but what is here
For eyes to see? What wonders in that sky
Beyond my eye! What living things concealed
Beneath my feet in grass or moss or slime,
As small to crickets as they are to us!
For Nero at the Circus holds a ruby
Before his eye to give his eye more sight
To see the games and tortures. So I say
There was no merit in me when I said
“Thou art the Christ.”

Let’s think of eyes this way:
The lawyers said there’s nothing in this fellow.
His family beheld no wonder in him.
Have Mary Magdalene and I invented
These words, this story?—who are we to do so,—
A fallen woman and a fisherman!
Or did this happen? Did we see these things?
Did Mary see him risen and did I?
Were other eyes still dark spots on the yolk,
And were our eyes full grown and did we see?
Is this a madman’s world where I can talk,
And have you write for centuries to read
And play the fool with them? Or do all things
Of spirit, as of stars, of spring and growth
Proceed in order, under law to ends?
No, Mark, my son, this is the truth, so write,
Preserve this story taken from my lips.
My work is almost done. Rome is the end
Of all my labors, I have faith The Eye
Will give me other eyes for other worlds!

Why should I not believe this? Not all seasons
Are for unfolding. In the winter time
You cannot see the miracle of birth,
Of germinating seeds, of blossoming.
Why not then that one time for seeing Death
Go up like mist before the rising sun?
And in this single instance of our Lord
Arising from the grave, see all men rise,
And all men’s souls discovered in his soul,
Their quality and essence, strength made clear?
And why not I the seer of these things?
Why should there be another and not I?
And I declare to you that untold millions
In centuries untold will live and die
By these words which you write, as I have told them.
And nation after nation will be moulded,
As heated wax is moulded, by these words.
And spirits in their inmost power will feel
Change and regeneration through them—well, what then?
Do you say God is living, that this world,
These constellations, move by law, that all
This miracle of life and light is held
In harmony, and that the soul of man
Moves not in order, but that it’s allowed
To prove an anarch to itself, sole thing
That turns upon itself, sole thing that’s shown
The path that leads no whither? is allowed
To feed on falsehood? that it’s allowed
To wander lawless to its ruin, fooled
By what it craves, by what it feels, by eyes
That swear the truth of what they see? by words
Which you will write from words I have affirmed?
And do you say that Life shall prove the foe
Of life, and Law of law? Or do you say
The child’s eyes see reality which see
The poppy blossoms or the mother’s breast,
And this Rome and these stars do not exist
Because the child’s eyes cannot compass them,
And get their image? Shall we trust our vision
Mounting to higher things, or only trust
Those things which all have seen except the souls
Who have not soared, or risen to the gift
Of seeing what seemed walking trees grow clear
As men or angels? No, it cannot be.
Man’s soul, the chiefest flower of all we know,
Is not the toy of Malice or of Sport.
It is not set apart to be betrayed,
Or gulled to its undoing, left to dash
Its hopeless head against this rock’s exception,
No water for its thirst, no Life to feed it,
No law to guide it, though this universe
Is under Law, no God to mark its steps,
Except the God of worlds and suns and stars,
Who loves it not, loves worlds and suns and stars,
And them alone, and leaves the soul to pass
Unfathered—lets me have a madman’s dream
And gives it such reality that I
Take fire and light the world, convincing eyes
Left foolish to believe. It cannot be....

Go write what I have told you, come what will
I’m going to the catacombs to pray.

MARSYAS

Pallas Athena in an hour of ease
From guarding states and succoring the wise,
Pressed wistfully her lips against a flute
Made by a Phrygian youth from resonant wood
Cut near Sangarius. Upon a bank
Made sweet by daisies and anemone
She sat with godly wisdom exercised
Blowing her breath against the stubborn tube
That it might answer and vibrate in song.
But while she played, down-looking, she beheld
A serpent’s eyes, which by the water’s edge
Lay coiled among the reeds, as if aware
Of the divinity that filled the place.
Then Athena saw her image in the cove,
Where like a silver mirror, motionless
Sangarius lay, and seeing her own face
Thus suddenly, was stricken with surprise
Of her fair forehead wrinkled, and her lips
Pursed and distorted as she strove to curb
The resisting instrument. So with a smile,
A little laugh, which brought her beauty back,
And gilded like a gradual burst of sun
The water where the charmed serpent lay
Lifting his head up to the living warmth,
She threw the flute down, and Olympus way
Vanished, from sight.

Marsyas all the while
Beneath an oak’s shade by the water’s edge
Had drowsed voluptuously, and heard the notes,
Dreaming some shepherd youth who watched his sheep
Upon a near-by hill which to the swale
Sloped in luxuriance, upon a reed
His idle fancies loosened from the stops.
But when Athena passed him, since he heard
A roar of wings, as when a flock of quail
Up-fly the hunter’s step, he woke to find
The forest silent and the music gone.
Then straying toward the rushes, he espied
The flute upon the golden sands, and took it
And tried his lips upon it, where the lips
Of Pallas Athena left it fragrant, moist,
And with a soul, which to the artless breath
Of the rude Satyr gave melodious speech.
So thinking that the music was his own
And that the flute was but a worthless wood
Save that it made his genius manifest,
And swollen with conceit Marsyas sent
A word of challenge to the Delphic god,
Apollo of the cithara, for trial
Of skill in music, saying who should prove
The victor might do with the other what
Pleased him to do, and let the Muses judge.

But when Athena heard Apollo laugh,
Where the nine Muses gossiped of the dare
Which Marsyas uttered, for the lower meadows
Of flowered Olympus whispered of the thing
In jest and quip, and knowing that her soul
Still echoed in the flute, but would anon
Fade from it as the perfume from a girdle
Tinct by the touch of Aphrodite’s hand,
Spoke to Apollo: “Grant a little time
Wherein the Satyr may improve his skill.”
To which the Muses nodded ’mid their smiles.
But yet Apollo gave assent, though teased
By reason of their chatter and the thought
Hid in Athena’s word that any respite
Granted the Satyr could prosper his success.

Meanwhile Marsyas waited for the day
Appointed of Apollo. Near Sangarius
And through the woodlands tireless with the flute:
Sometimes in imitative harmony
Mocking the sound of fluttering leaves, and now
The musical winds that blow in early spring
Around a peak of dancing asphodel
Where the sea warms them, and at other times
The little waves that patter on the sands
Of old Sangarius rich in numerous flags.
And once he strove with music’s alchemy
To turn to sound the sunlight of the morn
Which fills the senses as illuminate dew
Quickens the ovule of the tiger-flower.
Again he sang the sorrow of his youth
When a wild nymph after one day of bliss
Fled him while sleeping. And again he beat
The rhythm lying at the root of life
Which marks the whirling planets. And Apollo
Hearing betimes a note of purest tone
Fall like a star, betrayed his wonderment—
Whereat the muses vexed him with their smiles
And whisperings to each other. But Apollo
Could sense the Satyr’s waning skill, which dulled
With its employment, as Athena’s soul
Died from the flute, although the Satyr knew not
Each day of waiting doomed him:

Then at last
The day dawned for the trial of their skill,
And Marsyas came bearing the hollow flute—
For all had left it of Athena’s soul.
Then on Sangarius’ wooded banks the muses
To judge assembled, fair, majestical.
With arms entwined some close together stood,
Some half-reclined upon the flowery grass,
But all bore in their eyes the light of mirth
Suppressed, half-hidden. Then, for that Euterpe
Was mistress of the flute, since it was deemed
Fair to the Satyr that the contest be
Judged by the flute, gave signal to begin.
Whereat Apollo struck the cithara
To test the strings, and all the wood was hushed,
Awed by the magic of its harmony.
But when Marsyas blew upon the flute
A fear coursed through him as his wonder rose
Whether Apollo had bewitched its soul
To such discordance, or its utterance,
Such as he knew it, when compared with the god’s
Was so unmusical. Yet he dare not fail
The contest, so they waged it to the end,
While the sweet muses now grown pitiful
No longer smiled, but turned their heads away
In sorrow for Marsyas, for his shame
And for the fate to follow.

So at last
With one accord the muses rose and looked
With eyes significant upon Apollo,
Who angered by the Satyr’s swollen pride
And monstrous failure, had become a will
Of resolute retribution. But the muses,
Because they feel for those who trying lose,
Even as a mother for her crippled son
Whom the sound-footed distance in the race,
Hastened away lest they behold the thing
That came to pass. And flinging far the flute
Marsyas shrieked and sank upon the earth.

Whereat Apollo seized his wretched form
And lifting him up, with strips of laurel bark
Bound the poor Satyr to a rugged oak
And flayed him alive, and took the Satyr’s skin
And hung it in a cave, and turned his blood
To water, whence the river Marsyas
That from the cave flows onward to this day.

WORLDS BACK OF WORLDS

This was the world: It was a house
With a cool hallway end to end
Where buckets, pans and dippers hung,
And coats that in the breezes swung;
And eaves in which ’twas good to browse
On books stored in a musty box.
Along the walks were lilac boughs,
And by the windows hollyhocks.
And there were fields down to the hills
Which marked the earth’s far boundary;
A church-spire at the roadway’s bend,
And barns and cribs and twinkling mills,
And neighbor friends like Mrs. Gray,
And endless days of dream and play.
It was a world so guarded, safe,
So cherished by a God-watched sky
Seeing the summers come and pass,
A world so quiet it appeared
Like to the mimic world ensphered
By witchery of the old field glass
Which from an uncle’s drawer I took
Upon the distant hills to look.
You know not then that worlds not dead
Lie back of you and bide their chance
To seize your world of ignorance:
There was an opening in the ceiling
Above the kitchen where the man
Sat humming to himself at night
Amid the enshadowed candle-light,
And played on his accordion
Happy, unconscious and alone.
There full of mischief would I lie
And watch him through the ceiling’s hole,
And laugh for thought of elfish tricks,
Of whispering words or dropping sticks
To fright his well contented soul.
Sometimes I think there is an eye
Which is not God’s that spies upon us;
That other worlds may lie about us
Our fathers or our mothers lived,
Where Forces lurk and laugh and wait.

Here then was my world’s fair estate—
For so I knew it—could it be
Disturbed or wrecked? I never thought
That change or loss could come to me,
With God above the church’s spire....

But what are all these April dreams?
Less tangible the landscape seems;
The windmills, barns and houses swim
In a sphered ether, wheeling, dim.
Red cattle on green meadows pass
Across a belt of bluest sky
Like objects in the old field glass.
The chickens stalk about the yard
Like phantom things in my regard
And songs and cries and voices sound
Like muffled echoes from the ground.
Stones and dead sticks crawl and move;
And bones that through the winter lay
Something of living power betray.
I sink in all things dizzily,
Made one with nature, all I see,
Until I have no way to prove
My separate identity.
Yet death is what? Why, death is this:
Something that comes but is far off.
They worry sometimes for my cough.
I know they watch me, know they cry,
But what can wreck my earth or sky?

The doctor comes now every day
And with my father sits and talks,
Or stands about the garden walks.
One day I hear them: “It appears
Sometimes in ten or twenty years
As madness or paralysis.
Sometimes it passes, leaves a scar
And never troubles one again.
You say you had this in the war?
It’s hit your boy as phthisis,
Also I think he’s going blind.”
I saw my father trembling wind
Some plucked grass round and round his hand.
They noticed me, walked further on
And left me dreaming where I sat.

Some years since that day now are gone.
I have no world now, none but night.
My father’s world lay back of mine
And wrecked my world so guarded, safe,
So cherished by a God-watched sky
Which looked on summers rise and pass,
So like an image caught and held
By witchery of the old field glass.

THE PRINCESS’ SONG

“Blow, blow, thou wind,
Blow Conrad’s hat away,
Its rolling do not stay,
Till I have combed my hair,
And tied it up behind.”

Blow, blow, thou wind,
Blow Conrad’s love away,
My prince will come to-day.
Let him but find me fair,
And searching find.

The queen my mother grieves
For hopes that went astray.
Blow thou my grief away,
Among the April flags,
Among the dancing leaves.

Fill thou their golden wings,
And make the great clouds fly
Like swans across the sky,
Above the mountain crags
Where the young eaglet clings.

Blow—yet the mad wind dies
Among the flags and ferns.
And Conrad still returns,
Ere I have bound my hair,
Or dried my eyes.

Blow, blow, thou wind—
Blow Conrad’s love away.
But since it will not stay,
Blow thou afar my care
And make me kind.

As even, lad, thou art.
Blow, blow, thou wind, but since
Vainly I wait the prince
Come, Conrad, loose my hair,—
Thou loyal heart!

THE FURIES

I

But you must act. And therein lies the way
Of freedom from the Furies. You must burn
The substance of your being, if you stay
The impetus of life you will not learn
The simples of salvation. Go pluck off
A serpent from Alecto’s head and laugh
Exhilarate with its poison. If you scoff
You will perceive. You cannot love the staff
You have not scorned. You cannot weigh the act
You have not lived, the fear you did not prove.
Your soul was made to focus and extract
Through action every hatred, every love.
Pour out yourself if you would know release
From what the Furies do to spoil your peace.

II

Ambition that eludes, love never found
High hopes that tempt, or goodness still pursued
Have their own Furies, for this mortal ground
Breeds serpents from the blood of fortitude
And action as it does from listless fear.
You have aspired and fallen, curse the past
Till madness come! Be quiet, hide or sear
The memory of the dream, no less at last
The Sisters shall arrive! How do they come?
Your life grows round a moral governance
And you have served it. You are stricken dumb
To see it crumble spite of vigilance.
Now when you cannot think, rebuild, repair
The Sisters come and wheel your cripple’s chair.

III

You were a fennel stalk that laughed and grew
With laughter till the life in you could use
The cells no further, then the cold winds blew,
And you fell whispering of the April dews.
Grown fair or foul the rhythmic force was spent,
The summer gone, your little past achieved,
Repulsions balanced, though you might lament
So much neglected, or too much believed.
You were a dry weed when a Great Hand seized
And bore you as a carrier of fire.
The garden you had grown in had not pleased!
Was this, perhaps, the end of your desire?
You lit a heap of leaves where children came,
The Furies meditating watched the flame!

APOLLO AT PHERÆ

Zeus envied Æsculapius that he healed
The sick and brought the dead to life, and fain
Would slay him. So the Cyclops brought Zeus lightning
With which Zeus smote the healer. Then Apollo
Destroyed the Cyclops, grieving for his son.
And Clotho laughed to see the thread of fate
Slip by Atropos, woven in the cloth
Of destiny. For had she cut the thread
Shot from the spindle, then a little trace
Of scarlet, but no figures of despair
Had marked the storied tapestry. So Apollo
Was doomed for punishment to tend the flocks
Of King Admetus, lord of Pheræ. Next
Apollo met a mortal woman, daughter
Of an old soldier, servitor of the gods
And rich in land.

He, sitting on a rock
That overlooked a green Thessalian field
Where grazed the flocks, clad in a leopard’s skin,
His crook beside him, dreamed of wide Olympus:
“This hour the muses dance, the Council sits
And there is high debate, or Hera storms
For Zeus’ absence; there is life, and I
Unknown, alone, a shepherd by this field
Of pastoral pathos labor all the day.”
And then a step disturbed his revery;
And looking up he saw a slender maid
White as gardenias, jonquil-haired, with eyes
As blue as Peneus when he meets the sea.
And an old weakness crept upon the god.
For ever in his soul there shone the face
Of woman, like the face of Artemis,
His virgin sister, delicate and chaste;
And to o’ercome such whiteness and reserve
Had been Apollo’s madness from his birth.
And this Chione, daughter of the soldier,
Servitor of the gods and rich in land
At once became his passion. So he rose
And to Chione spoke, and she, to him.
And then anon she saw the unkept curls
Sun-bleached, that touched his shoulders, then his breast,
Smooth as her own, and then his arms, his hands
His shapely knees, his firm and pointed feet,
And her eyes closed as stars beneath the dawn
And dawn rose in her cheeks. And the god knew
Her inmost thought.

So all that day they played,
Amid the wind-blown light of Thessaly.
He wove her traps for crickets from the grass,
And from the willow branches made her flutes;
He caught her butterflies, and sang her runes
Of living things, and how the earth and sea
From Erebus and Love sprang into being;
And how the sun, and the bright pageant of the stars
Dance joyously to music. And Chione
Was dumb for happiness; and the day went by.
But with the dusk there came a swooning languor,
All was forgotten save the shepherd’s face
Held close to hers, and round his moving curls
The circled splendor of the sickle moon—
Nor eyes, nor lips, only a golden blur.
And rousing she beheld the enshadowed field
Flockless and silent, and the shepherd gone.
Then through the night Chione weakly walked
And found at last her home.

The light of day
Brought terror to Chione. Then she sought
And found Apollo where he sat before
And told him that her father, the old soldier,
Was favored of Admetus, and would bring
The royal power against him, if he failed
The troth of wedlock. And Apollo mused
Upon his exile from Olympus’ throne,
And Zeus’ wrath against him, that he slew
The Cyclops, and upon his shepherd state
Tending Admetus’ flocks, and how unknown
And weak he stood between these kingly hands
Of Zeus and of Admetus. And seeing her fair,
More fair in tears, he gave her his consent.

Next day Chione brought the god a robe
And sandals and a girdle. Thus arrayed
Chione took him to her father’s home
The ancient soldier, servitor of the gods,
And rich in land, and spoke of him as Acteus
A merchant from the city. Then the father
Gave thanks to Zeus and at the family board
Apollo supped, as one who would become
Chione’s husband. So it came to pass.
They walked together in the bridal train
Behind the perfumed torches.

All the while
Zeus smiled to see Apollo’s punishment.
And Hera, who with woman’s subtlety,
Knew that there shone within Apollo’s soul
A face like to the face of Artemis,
His virgin sister, delicate and chaste,
And to o’ercome such whiteness and reserve
Had been Apollo’s madness from his birth,
Laughed freely with the muses as she said:
“Thus is the masculine spirit ever caught
By its own lure, let Zeus himself take heed
Lest sometime he be snared.”

So when Olympus
Grew dull, the gods for fun looked o’er the ramparts
And spied upon Apollo at the board
With all Chione’s family; or at night
Beside Chione and the little faces
Which every year increased. Or on Apollo
About his bitter task of shepherding
To win the bread for faded Chione
And for the children.

Thus the nine years passed.
Then Zeus, avenged, sent all the muses down
To bring Apollo back, and to Olympus
Humbled and sorrowful he came again,
With wrinkles and a touch of whitened hair,
And a lack-lustre eye, which all the art
Of Aphrodite after many days
Could scarce remove.

Then Chione told her father
That Acteus was not a merchant from the city.
“Too late,” she said, “I found he had deceived me
And masked his shepherd calling.”

To which her father
The ancient soldier, servitor of the gods
And rich in land: “Yea, daughter, he deceived you.
Now he has run away, abandoned you,
May the gods note it and avenge the wrong.”

STEAM SHOVEL CUT

Steam Shovel Cut lies through a wood,
And the trestle’s at the end.
And north are the lonely Fillmore Hills,
And south the river’s bend.

It’s Christmas day and the blue on the hill
Is flapped by a flying crow.
And the steel of the railroad track is cold,
And the Cut is piled with snow.

What is that there by the trestle’s end
Where the Cut slopes down to the slough?
That’s Cora Williams lying there
In her cloak of faded blue.

Her skirt is red as a northern spy,
And her mittens blackberry black.
And under her cotton underskirt
There’s a green place on her back.

Her little gray hat is over her brow,
And covers a purple bruise.
She had white stockings for her feet
And the holes were in her shoes.

Where did you meet Croak Carless, girl?
And where did you start to booze?
They saw you once at Rigdon’s place,
And last at Sandy Hughes’.

On the night that Jesus Christ was born
You were drinking gin and beer.
They saw you sitting on Carless’ knees
As the midnight hour drew near.

They saw you two start into the night,
And the night was cold and black.
And then they found you there by the bridge
With the green bruise on your back.

Down through the dark to the Shovel Cut
The two of you walked and sang.
You were holding hands on the trestle bridge
When the bell began to clang.

’Twas back of the curve that the head-light shone
So what was the use of eyes?
The mad iron thing leaped on you there
As you ran on the trestle ties.

It rushed on you like a furious bull
That charges a scarlet flag.
The engineer looked long at the gauge
As the fireman scraped the slag.

Croak Carless jumped and fell on a stone
And the world to him was a blank.
But the iron thing struck at your back
And doubled you down on the bank.

Croak Carless woke from a sleep like death
And found you covered with blood.
He slinks to the river to wash his hands,
He runs to hide in the wood.

He steals through thickets, hides in a barn,
He cowers where the corn’s in shock.
But the posse catches Croak by noon,
And the jailer turns the lock.

Croak Carless’ wife weeps at the bars,
Croak weeps in a grated cell.
They’ve mortgaged the farm for a lawyer’s fee
To save Croak’s soul from hell.

For the Coroner has a bat-like thing
In a bottle safe in his room.
It looks like a baby devil fish—
It’s Cora Williams’ womb.

A woman’s womb is a thing of doom
And winged with a fan-like mesh.
And who was the father, they’re asking Croak,
Of this bit of jelly flesh?

And the doctors took an oath in the court
That a sharp club did the deed.
And the judge was a foe of the lawyer man
Croak Carless paid to plead.

And Croak had talked too much in jail,
And he trembled and testified
To a woeful tangle of time and place,
And the jury thought he lied.

Croak Carless’ wife sobbed out in court
As they twisted him out and in.
For they made him swear he drank with the girl,
And swear to his carnal sin.

They stood him up on the gallow’s trap
And his voice was clear and low:
If I killed Cora Williams, men,
My soul to hell should go.

They sprang the trap, Croak Carless shot
Like a wheat bag toward the floor.
And the doctors let his body hang
Till his old heart beat no more.

They let him alone to work and sweat
For a wife’s and children’s ease.
But they hung him up for a little beer
With a woman on his knees.

And he might have died in bed in a year,
For when they opened him up
They found his heart was a played out pump,
And leaked like a rusty cup.

And a man can live as the church decrees,
Or dance in the way of vice,
A woman’s womb is a thing of doom,
And life is the current price.

’Tis a vampire bat, or the leather box
From which you rattle the dice.
’Tis an altar of doom, is a woman’s womb,
And man is the sacrifice.

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