1
Where does this downhill turn up again? Driven to the wall you’d put
claws to your toes and make a ladder of smooth bricks. But this, this
scene shifting that has clipped the clouds’ stems and left them to
flutter down; heaped them at the feet, so much hay, so much bull’s
fodder. (_Au moins_, you cannot deny you have the clouds to grasp now,
_mon ami_!) Climb now? The wall’s clipped off too, only its roots are
left. Come, here’s an iron hoop from a barrel once held nectar to gnaw
spurs out of.
2
You cannot hold spirit round the arms but it takes lies for wings, turns
poplar leaf and flutters off—leaving the old stalk desolate. There’s much
pious pointing at the sky but on the other side few know how youth’s
won again, the pesty spirit shed each ten years for more skin room. And
who’ll say what’s pious or not pious or how I’ll sing praise to God?
Many a morning, were’t not for a cup of coffee, a man would be lonesome
enough no matter how his child gambols. And for the boy? There’s no craft
in him; it’s this or that, the thing’s done and tomorrow’s another day.
But if you push him too close, try for the butterflies, you’ll have a
devil at the table.
3
One need not be hopelessly cast down because he cannot cut onyx into a
ring to fit a lady’s finger. You hang your head. There is neither onyx
nor porphyry on these roads—only brown dirt. For all that, one may see
his face in a flower along it—even in this light. Eyes only and for a
flash only. Oh, keep the neck bent, plod with the back to the split
dark! Walk in the curled mudcrusts to one side, hands hanging. Ah well.…
Thoughts are trees! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Leaves load the branches and upon
them white night sits kicking her heels against the stars.
* * * * *
_A poem can be made of anything. This is a portrait of a disreputable
farm hand made out of the stuff of his environment._