human
Can you write a poem for me in the style of Carlo Gozzi?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem in the style of Carlo Gozzi:
  Edwin Markham                _The Bird with the Woe_
Edgar Guest                  _Ain't Nature Wonderful!_
(She steps brightly forward with an air of soprano introduction.)
I look from out my window,
A bird upon a pear bough,
But what is that to me?
Because the thought comes icy;
That bird you never knew--
It's not your bird or pear tree,
And what is it to you?
Poets to men a curious sight afford;
Still they will sing, though all around are bored;
But this wise grackle does a kinder thing;
Silent he's bored, while all around him sing!
(Prefaced by a short baritone talk on Chinese architecture.)
Celia, have you been to China?
There upon a mystic tree
Sits a bird who murmurs Chinese
'Neath that tree of willow-pattern
Twice seven thousand scornful go
Paraphrasers and translators
Of the long-deceased Li-Po:
Chinese feelings swift discerning
Without all this time and fuss
Let us eat that bird, thus learning
Of the Him in Us!
I toss my heels up to my head ...
That was a bird I heard say glunk
But it
Is dead now!
(The bird)
Probably putrescent
I scrabble my toes ...
I was a shock-headed boy bringing in the laundry;
Why did I try for that damn bird, anyway?
I suppose I had been in the habit of aiming for the pears.
But I chucked a stone, anyhow,
And it ricocheted and hit my head,
And as it hadn't any brains inside the stone busted it
And there I was, dead.
And dead with me were all the improper things
I'd got out of the servants about their employers
Bringing in the laundry;
But the grackle sings on.
Sing forever, O grackle!
I died, knowing lots of things _you_ don't know!
(He mutters wearily in an undertone.)
Well, they're quite dead, Rambuncto; thoroughly dead.
It was a natural thing enough; my eyes
Stared baffled down the forest-aisles, brown and green,
Not learning what the marks were. Still, who learns?
Not I, who stooped and picked the things that day,
Scarlet and gold and smooth, friend ... smooth enough!
And she's in a vault now, old Jane Fotheringham,
My mother-in-law; and my wife's seven aunts,
And that cursed bird that used to sit and croak
Upon their pear-tree--they threw scraps to him--
My wife, too. Lord, that was a curious thing!
Because--"I don't like mushrooms much," I said,
And they ate all I picked. And then they died.
But ... Well, who knows it isn't better that way?
It's quieter, at least.... Rambuncto--friend--
Why, you're not going?... Well--it's a stupid year,
And the world's very useless.... Sorry.... Still
The dusk intransience that I much prefer
Leaves place for little hope and less regret.
I don't suppose he'd care, to stay to dine
Under the circumstances.... What's life for?
There was a grackle sat on our old pear tree--
Don't ask me why--I never did really know;
But he made my wife and me feel, for really the very first time
We were out in the actual country, hindering things to grow;
It gave us rather a queer feeling to hear the grackle grackle,
But when it got to be winter time he got up and went thence
And now we shall never know, though we watch the tree till April,
(Striking from time to time a few notes on a mouth-organ, with a
Grackles, trees--
I been thinkin' 'bout 'em all: I been thinkin' they're all right:
_God made little apples_, a hobo sang in Kankakee,
That lets God out.
'Gene Field sang, "The world is full of a number of things,"
Now he's dead, I say things, say 'em well, too....
'Gene Field ... back in the lost days, back in the eighties,
Singing, colyumning ... 'Gene Field ... forgotten ...
Back in Arkansaw there was a green bird, too,
Memories, memories!
There are only trees now, no 'Gene, no eighties
Gray cats, I can feel your fur in my heart ...
Green grackle, I remember now,
Back in the lost days, back in the eighties
The cat ate you.
Apple green bird on a wooden bough,
And the brazen sound of a long, loud row,
And "Child, take the train, but mind what you do--
Frost, tonight, and Sandburg too!"
Then I sally forth, half wild, half cowed,
Till I come to the surging, impervious crowd,
The wine-filled, the temperance, the sober, the pied,
The Poets that cover the countryside!
The Poets I never would meet till tonight!
A gleam of their eyes in the fading light,
And I took them all in--the enormous throng--
And with one great bound I bolted along.
If the garden had merely held birds and flowers!
But I hear a voice--they have talked for hours--
"Frost tonight--" if 'twere merely he!
Half wild, half cowed, I flee, I flee!
(Who rather begrudged the time he used up in going out to the
suburbs.)
He had been singing, but I had not heard his voice;
He had been bothering the rest with song;
But I, most comfortably far
Within the city's stimulating jar
Feeling for bus-conductors and for flats,
And shop-girls buying too expensive hats,
And silver-serviced dinners,
And various kinds of pleasant urban sinners,
And riding on the subway and the L,
Had much beside his song to hear and tell.
But one day (it was Spring, when poets ride
Afield to wild poetic festivals)
I, innocently making calls
Was snatched by a swift motor toward his tree
(Alas, but lady poets will do this to thee
If thou art decorative, witty or a Man)
And heard him sing, and on the grass did bide.
But my whole day was sadder for his words,
And I was thinner
Because, in spite of my most careful plan
I missed a very pleasant little dinner....
In short, unless well-cooked, I don't like Birds.
(Who got Miss Rittenhouse to read it for her.)
I bend and watch the grackles billing,
And fight with tears as I float by;
O be a fowl for my heart's filling!
O be a bird, yet never fly!
(Mailed disdainfully by him from anywhere but America, and read
prayerfully by a committee from Chicago.)
... so then naturally
This Count Rainuv I speak of
(Certainly I did not expect you would ever have heard of him;
You are American poets, aren't you?
That's rather awful ... I am the only American poet
I could ever tolerate ... well, sniff and pass....)
Therefore ... well, I knew Rainuv.
(My P. G. course at Penn, you'll remember;
A little Anglo-Saxon and Basuto,
But Provencal, mostly. Most don't go in for that....
You haven't, of course ... What, no Provencal?
Well, of course, I know
Rather more than you do. That's my specialty.
But then--_Omnis Gallia est divisa_--but no matter.
Not fit, perhaps you'd say, that, to be quoted
Before ladies.... That's your rather amusing prudishness....)
Well, this Rainuv, then,
A person with a squint like a flash
Of square fishes ... being rather worse than most
Of the usual _literati_
Said, being carried off by desire of boasting
That he knew all the mid-Victorians
_Et ab lor bos amics:_
(He thought it was something to boast of.)
We'll say he said he smoked with Tennyson,
And--deeper pit--_pax vobiscum_--went to vespers
With Adelaide Anne Procter; helped Bob Browning elope
With Elizabeth and her lapdog (said it bit him)
Said he was the first man Blake told
All about the angels in a pear-tree at Peckham Rye
So ... we come, being slightly irritated, to facing him down.
"... And George Eliot?" we ask lightly.
"_Roomed with him_," nodded Rainuv confidently,
Rainuv is a king to you....
Were kicked by me in passing....
(Clutching a non-existent portiere with one hand.)
The folk of the wood called me--
"There sits a golden bird
Upon your mother's pear-tree--"
But I never said a word.
The Sleepy People whispered--
"The bird is singing now."
But I felt not then like leaving bed
Nor listening beneath the bough.
But the wronged world beat my portals--
"Come out or be sore oppressed!"
So I threw a stone at the grackle
And my throbbing heart had rest.
(Advancing with a dreamy air of there still being a Yellow Book.)
Spring comes--yet where the dream that glows?
There only waves upon the lea
A lonely pear-bough where doth doze
A bird of green, and merely he:
Why weave of him our poetry?
Why of a Grackle need we sing?
Ah, far another fowl for me--
I seek Spring Chickens in the Spring.
Though May returns, and frisking shows
Her ankles through this white clad tree,
Alas, old Spring's gone with the rose,
Gone is all old romance and glee--
Yet still a joy remains to me--
Softly our lyric lutes unstring,
Far from this Grackle we shall flee
And seek Spring Chickens in the Spring!
Too soon Youth's _mss_ must close,
(_Omar_) its rose be pot-pourri;
What of this bird and all his woes!
Catulla, I would fly to thee--
Bright bird of luring lingerie,
Of bushy bob, of knees aswing,
This golden task be mine in fee,
To seek Spring Chickens in the Spring!
Prince, let us leave this grove, pardie,
A flapper is a fairer thing:
Let us fare fast where such there be,
And seek Spring Chickens in the Spring!
I heard a flaming noise that screamed--
"Man, panting, crushed, must be redeemed!
Man! All the crowd of him!
Quiet or loud of him!
Men! Raging souls of them!
Heaps of them, shoals of them!
Hurtling impassioned through fiery-tongued rapture!
Leaping for glories all avid to capture
Bounteous aeons of star-beating bliss!"
I heard a voice cry, and I'm sure it said this:
Though the cook said the noise was a tree and a bird ...
_But I heard! Gods, I heard!_
(Creeping mysteriously out of the twilight, draped in a complex.)
Forslin murmurs a melodious impropriety
Musing on birds and women dead aeons ago....
Was he not, once, this fowl, a gay bird in society?
Can any one tell? ... After an evening out, who can know?
Perhaps Cleopatra, lush in her inadequate wrappings,
Lifted him once to her tatbebs.... Perhaps Helen of Troy
Found him more live than her Paris ... a bird among dead ones....
I tie my shoes politely, a salute to this bird in his pear-tree;
... What is a pear-tree, after all.... What is a bird?
What is a shoe, or a Forslin, or even a Senlin?
What is ... a what? ... Is there any one who has heard? ...
What is it crawls from the kiss-thickened, Freudian darkness,
Amorous, catlike ... Ah, can it be a cat?
I would so much rather it had been a scarlet harlot,
There is so much more genuine poetry in that....
(Note by the Collator: It was, in fact, Fluffums, the Angora cat
belonging to the Jenkinses on the corner; and the disappointment
was too much for Mr. Aiken, who fainted away, and had to be taken
to fill an entire book.)
(Impetuously, with a floppy hat.)
When one is young, you know, then one can sing
Of anything:
One is so young--so pleasurably so--
How can one know
If God made little apples, or yet pears,
Or ... if God cares?
You are young, maybe, Grackle; that is why
I want to cry
Seeing you watch the poems that I say
This little boy-bird seems to nod to me
With sympathy:
He is so young: it must be that is why ...
_As young as I!_
(Advancing with sedate courtesy in a long-sleeved, high-necked
lecture costume.)
(They were strong, they were righteous, my ancestors, but they
always kept on their clothes)
My mate is the best of all mates alive: his voice is a raptured
rhyming:
(With a certain aloofness.)
Kenton's arrogant eyes watch the Widdemer pear-tree,
His thistle-down-footed sister puts out her tongue at him....
Kenton, what do you see? That yonder is only a bare tree;
Come, carry Deborah home; she is gossamer-light and slim.
"Aw, mother, but I don't want to!" Kenton replies with devotion,
contribution.)
Made me what I am--
You oughto heard my mother
When I first said damn!
I put a pin in sister's chair,
She jumped sky-high ...
I don't know what'll happen
When I come to die!
_But oh, the stars burst wild in a glorious crimson whangle,_
charged up trees!_
Forceps in the dentist's chair,
Razors in the lather ...
Lord, the black experience
I've had time to gather ...
But I've thought of one thing
That may pull me through--
I'm a reg'lar devil
But the Devil was, too!
(Who apparently did not care for the suburbs.)
I preen myself....
My ego expanding encompasses ...
Everything, naturally....
This bird preens himself ...
It is our only likeness....
Ah, God, I want a Ghetto
And a Freud and an alley and some Immigrants calling names ...
God, you know
How awful it is....
Here are trees and birds and clouds
And picturesquely neat children across the way on the grass
Not doing anything
(Poor little fools, I mustn't blame them for that
Perhaps they never
But oh, God, take me to the nearest trolley line!
This is a country landscape--
I can't stand it!
God, take me away--
There is no Sex here
(Recites in a flippant voice which occasionally chokes up with
irrepressible emotion, and clenching her hands tensely as she
notices that the Grackle has hopped twice.)
O I have brought in now
A packet o' brown senna
And an iron pot;
In my scarlet gown
I make all hot.
And other men and girls
Write like me
Setting herbs a-plenty
In their poetry
(_Bergamot for hair-oil,_
_Bergamot for tea!_)
And they may do ill now
Or they may do well,
(Little should I care now
What they have to sell--)
But what bergamot and rue are
None of them can tell.
All above my bitter tea
I have set a lid
(As my bitter heart
By its red gown hid)
They write of bergamot
Because I did....
(From its padded hangers
They've snatched my red gown,
Men as well as girls
And gone down town,
Flaunting my vocabulary,
Every verb and noun!)
And the grackle moans
High above the pot,
He is sick with herbs ...
_And am I not,_
_Who have brought in_
(With a strong note of infant brutality.)
Gosh, kid! that bird a-cheepin' in the tree
All green an' cocky--why, it might be me
Singin' to you.... Wisht I was just a bird
Bringin' you worms--aw, you know, things I've heard
'Bout me--an' flowers, maybe.... Like as not
Somebody'd get me with an old slingshot
An' I'd be dead.... Gee, it'd break you up!
Nothin' would be the same to you, I bet,
Knowin' my grave was out there in the wet
And we two couldn't pet no more.... Say, kid,
It makes me weep, same as it always did,
To think how bad you'd feel....
I got a thought,
An awful funny one I sorta caught--
Nobody never thought that way, I guess--
When I get blue, an' things is in a mess
I map out all my funeral, the hearses
An' nineteen carriages, an' folks with verses
Sayin' how great I was, an' all like that,
An' wreaths, an' girls with crapes around their hat
Tellin' the world how bad their hearts was broke,
An' you, just smashed to think I had to croak....
I can't stand that bird, somehow--makes me cry....
_The world'll be darn sorry when I die!_
(Who, being very polite, only thought it.)
There is no magic in a living tree,
And, if they be not sea-gulls, none in birds:
My soul is seasick, and its only words
Murmur desire for things more like a sea.
In this dry landscape here there seems to be
No water, merely persons in large herds,
Who, by their long remarks, their arid girds,
Come from the Poetry Society.
What could be drier, where all things are dry?
What boots this bird, this pear-tree spreading wide?
Oh, make this bird they all discuss to pie,
Hew down this tree and shape its planks to ships,
Send them to sea with these folk nailed inside,
That I may have great sonnets on my lips!
(With an air of admitting the tragic and all-important fact.)
Never believe this bird connotes
Jade whorls of carven commonness:
Nor as from ordinary throats
Slides his sharp song in ice-strung stress.
He is the cold and scornful Loon,
Who, hoping that the sun shall fail,
Steeps in the silver of the moon
His burnished claws, his chiseled tail.
(Speaking, notwithstanding, with unshaken poise.)
I cannot bear that Bird
He is green
With envy of My Songs:
Has a furtive look
And the Grass ... the terrible Grass ...
It waves at me....
It is too flirtatious!
Let us leave swiftly ...
_I fear this Landscape!_
_It would vamp me!_
handsome tribute by wire.)
I sing of the joy of the Small Paths
The paths that lead nowhere at all,
(Though I never have gone on them nevertheless
They are admirable, and so small!)
I go out at midnight in motors
But, being a Roosevelt, I drive
Straight ahead on the neatly paved highway,
For I wish with much speed to arrive.
Oh, the joy and effulgence of Small Paths
Surrounded with Birds and with Trees
I would love to go down on a Small Path
And sit in communion with these!
Oh, Grackle, I yearn to be with you,
For poetic communion I yearn
But I have ten engagements to speak in the suburbs
And alas, I've no time to return.
_Oh alas, the undone moments,_
_Oh, the myriad hours bereft_
_Trying to be twenty people_
_And to do things right and left._
_I would sit down by a Small Path_
_And would make me a Large Rhyme_
_I should love to find my soul there_
_But I haven't got the time!_
(Who felt that the Bird did not sufficiently uphold Art.)
Grackle, Grackle on your tree,
There's something wrong to-day,
In the moonlight, in the quiet evening,
You will rise and croak and fly away;
Oh, you have sat and listened till you're wild for flight
(And that's all right)
But you have never criticised a single song
(And that's all wrong)
Lo, would you add despair unto despair?
Do you not care
That all these lesser children of the Muse
Shall sing to you exactly as they choose?
You are ungrateful, Fowl. I wrote a poem,
Once, in the middle of August, intending to show 'em
That you should not
Be shot:
What saw I then, what heard?
Multitudes--multitudes, under the tree they stirred,
And with too many a broken note and wheeze
They sang what each did please....
O bird of emeraldine beak and brow,
Thou sawest it all, and did not even cackle,
Bird, thou art not a Veery,
Ne'erless, I knew thy gentle song,
Long, long e'er I could vote;
Nor e'en a real Blue Bird;
Yet there's a moral high and pure
In all thy likings heard:
_Go on and ne'er look back!_"
The noble tow'rs of Princeton
Hear high thy pensive trill,
And eke my ear has heard thee
The while I fished the rill;
Thy note rings out at daybreak
Before I rise to toil;
Thou counselest Persistence;
Thy song no stone can spoil;
_Go on and ne'er look back!_"
Yet, Bird, there is a limit
To all I've undergone;
From five o'clock till five o'clock
Thou'st chanted o'er my lawn;
I cannot get my work done ...
I give thee, Bird, advice;
If thou wouldst save thy skin alive,
Let me not warn thee twice,
_Go on and ne'er look back!_"
(Who came out rather tired from trying to choose a new suit, and
could not get it off his mind.)
Gents' immanent furnishings!
On a mystic tide I ride, I ride,
Of the clothes of a million springs!
I take the train for the suburbs
Or I sweep from Pole to Pole,
But where is the window that holds them not,
Gents' furnishings of my soul!
Shirtings and coatings too!
How can I think of mere birds, nor blink
The hot world throbs with Immenseness,
The Voidness plunks in the Void,
And all of it doubtless has something to do
Trousers through all the town!
And the tailors' dummies with iron for tummies
Smirk in their blue and brown;
I float in a slithering simoon
Of fevered and surging tints,
And my ears are dulled with the mighty throb
_My wardrobe, they send it fleet...._
_And the Cosmos at last complete!_
(Who, incidentally, happened to be correct.)
Ho, Spring calls clear a message....
The Grackle is not green....
She knows just what I mean.
The lilac and the willow
The grass and violet
They are my wild companions
Where I was raised a pet.
The secrets of great nature
From childhood I have heard;
Oh, I can tell a wild flower
Swiftly from a wild bird;
And Myrtle (dead all three ...
Among my wildwood sweethearts
Was much mortality).
If they my loves returning
Might gather 'neath these boughs
(Oh, they would sniff at pear-trees
Who loved the Northern Sloughs).
Their wild eternal whisper
Would back me up, I ween:
"This bird is not a Grackle:
A Grackle is not green."
(Mrs. Conkling points maternally.)
Oh, Hilda! see the little Bird!
If you will watch, upon my word
He will come out; a Veery he
As like an Oboe as can be:
He shall be winged, with a tail,
Mayhap a Beak him shall not fail!
And I will tell him, "Birdie, oh,
This is my Hilda, you must know--
And oh, what joy, if you but knew--
She shall make poetry on you!"
dictation.)
Oh, my lovely Mother,
The Bird sees me.
_I love my Mother_
_More than I do You!_
_Pierrette's mother speaks:_
"Sure is it Pierrette yez are, Pierrette and no other?
(Och, Pierrette, me heart is broke that ye shud be that same--)
Pertendin' to be Frinch, an' me yer poor ould Irish mother
That named ye Bridget fer yer aunt, a dacent Dublin name!
Ye that was a pious girrl, decked out in ruffled collars,
With yer hair that docked an' frizzed--if Father Pat shud see!
Dancin' on a piece o' grass all puddle-holes an' hollers,
Amusin' these quare folk that's called a Pote-Society!"
_Her locks flour-sprent,_
_That danced beneath the flowering tree_
_Leaping as she went._
"If there's folk to stare at ye ye'll dance for all creation
(Since ye went to settlements 'tis little else I've heard),
Letting yer good wages go to chat of 'inspiration,'
Flappin' up an' down an' makin' out yez are a burrd!
Sure if ye got cash fer it 'tis little I'd be sayin'
(Och, Pierrette, stenographin' 'tis better wage ye'll get,)
Sorra wan these long-haired folk has spoke till ye o' payin',
Talkin' of yer art, an' ye a leppin' in the wet!"
_Her head down-bent,_
_Went back on the three-thirteen,_
_Coughing as she went._
(Who felt for her.)
Pierrette has gone--but it was not
Exactly that she lied;
She said she had to catch a train;
"I have a date," she cried.
To keep a sudden rendezvous
It came into her mind
As quite the quickest way to flee
From parties of this kind;
She went most softly and most soon,
But still she made a stir,
For, going, she took all the men
To town along with her.
How dear to me are home and wife,
The dear old Tree I used to Love,
The Pear it shed on starting life
And God's Outdoors so bright above!
For Virtue gets a high reward,
Noble is all good Scenery,
So I will root for Virtue hard,
Each had a column;
Chris and I were plump and gay,
That was full of wit,
As good as My Column
Nearly every bit!
We sat on each an office chair
And all snapped our scissors;
Their things were pretty fair
But all of mine were Whizzers!
Frank wrote of Cyril,
An ungrammatic sinner,
But I wrote of Drink
And Chris wrote of Dinner;
And Frank kept getting thinner
And we kept getting plump--
Frank sat like a Bump
Translating from the Latin,
Chris wrote of Happy Homes
I wrote of Alcoholic Foams,
And we still seemed to fatten;
Frank wrote of Swell Parties where he had been,
I wrote of Whisky-sours, and Chris wrote of Gin!
But we both got fatter,
So the parties didn't matter,
Though F.P.A. he published each as soon as he'd been at her....
F.P.A. went calling
And sang about it sorely ...
"_Pass around the shandygaff," says brave old Morley!_
F.P.A. played tennis
And told the World he did....
_I bought a stein of beer and tipped up the lid!_
Frank wrote up all his evenings out till we began to cry,
_But we drowned our envy in a long cool Rye!_
And then we got an invitation, Frank and Chris and me,
To come and say a poem on a Grackle in a Tree:
But Chris and I'd had twenty ryes, and we began to cackle--
"Oh, see the ninety pretty birds, and every one a Grackle!
A Grackle with a Hackle,
A ticklish one to tackle
A tacklish one to tickle ... To ticker ... To licker...."
And we both began to giggle
And woggle, and wiggle,
And we giggled and we gurgled
And we gargled and were gay ...
_For we'd had an invitation, just the same as F.P.A.!_
(Acting, in spite of himself, as if the Bird were his long-lost
Good fowl, though I would speak to thee
With wonted geniality,
And Oxford charm in my address,
It's not quite easy, I confess:
_Suaviter in modo's_ hard
When poets trample one's front yard,
And this is such an enormous crew
That you've got trailing after you!
I'd washed my youngest child but four,
Put the milk-bottles out the door,
Paid my wife's hat-bill with no sigh
(Ah, happy wife! Ah, happy I!)
Tossed down (see essays) then my pen
To be a private citizen,
Written about that in the Post,
When lo, upon the lawn a host
Of Poets, sprung upon my sight
Each eager for a Poem to write!
To a less placid bard you'd be
A flat domestic tragedy,--
Bird--grackle--nay, I'd scarcely call
You bird--a mere egg you, that's all--
Only a bad egg has the nerve
To poach (a pun!) on my preserve!
(Both columnists whom you should see)
And L.M.N (a man who never
Columns a word that isn't clever,)
And B.C.D. (who scintillates
Much more than most who get his rates)
A thing like this would be a trial....
It is to me, there's no denial.
Why, Bird, if they would sing of you,
Or what Young Devils they all are,
Or South-Sea-Jazz-Hounds sorrowing,
It would be quite another thing:
But, Bird, here they come mousing round
On my suburban, sacred ground,
And see my happiness--it's flat,
You wretched Bird, they'll sing of that!
They'll hymn my Happy Hearth, and later
The joys of my Refrigerator,
Burst into song about the points
The Jimmy-Pipe I often carol,
And each Uncontroverted Fact
With which my poetry is packed ...
In short, base Bird, they'll sing like me,
_And then, where will my living be?_
Bird, if you think I do not care
To gaze upon your feathered form
Rather than converse with some fair
Or make my brow with tennis warm;
If you should think I'd liefer far
Hear your sweet song than fast be driving
Within my costly motor car
And in my handsome home arriving,
If you should think I would be gone
Far sooner than you might expect
From off this uncolumnar lawn;
Bird, you'd be utterly correct!
De poets dey tinka dey gotta da tree,
Dey gotta da arta, da birda--but me,
I lova da arta, I lova da flower,
(Ah, _bella fioretta_!) I waita da hour:
I mowa da grass, I rake uppa da leaf--
I brava young Carlo--Maria! fine t'ief!
I waita
Till later.
Da poets go homa, go finda da sup',
I creep by dis tree and I digga her up,
(Da Grackla, da blossom, da tree-a I love,
_Per Dio!_ and da art!) So I giva da shove,
I catcha da birda, I getta da tree,
I taka to Rosa my wife, and den she--
She gotta
In potta!
(Bounding on toward the end of the proceedings with a bundle over
And my throbbing heels
And my throbbing feet
_All_ of the Poetry Society but _me_!
"That's not a grackle," said I to all of him,
Seething with their poetry, iron-tongued, grim,
"_That's an English sparrow on that limb!_"
And they all went home
No more to roam.
Laid down change and marched out again
And I walked through Hoboken, torn-socked, free,
_With my red heart galumphing all agog in front of me!_
THE GRACKLE (who does not appear at all)
THE SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIP (_Entering despairingly_)
Alas--in vain! Yet I have barred the way
As best I might, that this great horror fall
Not on the world. _Returned with many thanks_
_And not because of lack of merit,_ I
Have said to twenty million poets ... nay ...
Profane it not, that word ... to twenty million
Persons who wasted stamps and typewriting
And midnight oil, to add unto the world
More Bunk.... In vain--in vain!
(_She sinks down sobbing._)
We have mailed their poems back
To every man and woman-jack
Who weigh the postman down
From country and from town;
But all in vain, in vain,
They mail them in again!
Though we've sent them flying,
We are nearly dying,
From the books of poetry
Sent by people unto we;
In vain we keep them off our shelves,
They go and publish them themselves!
All, bravely have ye toiled, my masters, aye,
And I've toiled with you.... All in vain, in vain--
The Day has come that we adore,
The Day we've all been working for,
Now babies in their bassinets
And military school cadets,
And chambermaids in each hotel
And folks in slums who cannot spell,
Professors, butchers, clergymen,
And every one, have grabbed a pen:
The Day has come--tra la, tra lee--
_Everybody_ writes poetry!
We're very careful what we put in;
This magazine is of highest grade;
If it doesn't appeal to our personal taste
There's no use sending it, we're afraid;
We don't like Shelley, we don't like Keats,
We don't like poets who're tactlessly dead;
If you write like us there will be no fuss--
spectacles to the ground_)
Nobody Else's Poetry!
I've made Poetry
What it is today;
That's what people say:
Earnest-minded effort
Never can be hid;
The Others think They did it--
PERSON RESPONSIBLE (_still modestly_)
Well, so they say--
But I have to go away.
I'm due at a lecture
I give at three today.
In Mount Olympus we have heard a noise and crying
As swine that in deep agony are dying,
A voice of tom-cats wailing,
A never failing
Thud as of rolling logs:
A chattering like frogs,
And all this noise, unceasing, thunderous,
Making a horrible fuss,
Cries out upon my name.
Oh, what am I, the Muse and giver of Fame,
So to be mocked and humbled by this use?
You're behind the times; quite narrow,
Don't you want
Culture for the masses?
No; I am Greek; we never did.
Besides, it _isn't_ culture.
Oh, how narrow! Oh, how shocking!
She's no Muse! She must be mocking!
MUSE (_sternly, having lost her temper by this time_)
I am a goddess. Trifle not with me.
ELDERLY LADIES (_with resolute tolerance_)
She _looks_ like a pupil of Isadora Duncan,
But she says she's a goddess; what folly we'd be sunk in
To believe a word she says; she needs broad'ning, we conjecture--
MUSE (_lifting her arms angrily_)
Ate, my sister!
ATE, (_behind the scenes_) I come!
My maiden aunt in Keokuk
She writes free verse like anything;
My great-grandmother is in luck,
She's sold her three-piece work on Spring;
My mother does Poetic Plays,
My dad does rhymes while signing checks,
And my flapper sister--we wouldn't have missed her--
She's writing an epic on Sin and Sex--
The world's as perfect as it can be,
Everybody writes Poetry!
CHORUS OF CRITICS, (_chanting yet more loudly:_)
The world's not _quite_ as perfect as it yet might be,
Excepting for our brother-critics' poetry!
Rash poets, think what you would do--
There's nobody left you can read it to!
We never thought of that!
An audience, 'tis flat,
Is our most pressing need,
To listen to our screed;
(_Each turns to his neighbor_)
Base scribbler, get thee hence
Or be my audience!
Semi-chorus:
We want to write ourselves! We'll not!
Semi-chorus:
But what _you_ write is merely rot!
Hush up and let _me_ read
My great, eternal screed!
ATE (_stealthily_) Ha, ha!
Let us write Reviews
THE SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIP (_entering, and addressing the
Editors and Publishers who follow her._)
Now I shall pass from you. My task comes to a close.
I wing my hallowed way
To the Fool-Killer's Paradise, and there for aye Repose.
Nay, our great helper, nay!
Leave us not yet, our only comforter!
We'll need thee still;
Folks who write poetry
There's naught on earth can kill!
B'gosh, I do believe,
Now that you speak of it, I could do just as good
As any of those there fool dead fellers could!
SEMI-CHORUS OF EDITORS (to Spirit of Rejection Slip)
You see? Too late!
Who shall escape o'ermastering tragic fate?
The Day has come that we adore,
The Day we've all been working for;
The Day has come, tra la, tra lee!
_Everybody_ writes Poetry!
THE MUSE (_unnoticed in the background_)
(He recites with appropriate gestures.)
It seems that Margaret Widdemer
Possessed a Tree with a Bird in it,
And being human, prone to err,
Thought 'twould be pleasant to begin it,
Or christen it, as one might say,
By asking poets closely herded
To come around and spend the day
And sing of what the Tree and Bird did.
(Poor girl! When next she takes her pen
Some bromide critic's sure to say,
"Don't dare do serious work again--
This stuff is your true metier!")
No sooner said than done; the bards
Rush out in quantities surprising,
And, overflowing four front yards
They carol till the moon is rising;
With ardor, or, as some say, "pash,"
In song kind or satirical,
Asking, apparently, no cash,
They make their offerings lyrical.
I'd be the first a spear to break
For Poesy; but this to tackle ...
It seems a lot of fuss to make
About one Tree and one small Grackle.