Spoon River Anthology

  In the hands of a sleight of hand performer.

  And up to the end I saw those leaves

  Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves,

  Why, can’t you see they are days and days

  And the days and days of seventy years?

  And why do you torture me with leaves

  And the little entries on them?

  WILLARD FLUKE

  MY wife lost her health,

  And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.

  Then that woman, whom the men

  Styled Cleopatra, came along.

  And we—we married ones

  All broke our vows, myself among the rest.

  Years passed and one by one

  Death claimed them all in some hideous form,

  And I was borne along by dreams

  Of God’s particular grace for me,

  And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams

  Of the second coming of Christ.

  Then Christ came to me and said,

  “Go into the church and stand before the congregation

  And confess your sin.”

  But just as I stood up and began to speak

  I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat—

  My little girl who was born blind!

  After that, all is blackness!

  ANER CLUTE

  OVER and over they used to ask me,

  While buying the wine or the beer,

  In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,

  Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived,

  How I happened to lead the life,*

  And what was the start of it.

  Well, I told them a silk dress,

  And a promise of marriage from a rich man—

  (It was Lucius Atherton).

  But that was not really it at all.

  Suppose a boy steals an apple

  From the tray at the grocery store,

  And they all begin to call him a thief,

  The editor, minister, judge, and all the people—

  “A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes.

  And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread

  Without stealing it, why, the boy will steal.

  It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple

  That makes the boy what he is.

  LUCIUS ATHERTON

  WHEN my moustache curled,

  And my hair was black,

  And I wore tight trousers

  And a diamond stud,

  I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.

  But when the gray hairs began to appear—

  Lo! a new generation of girls

  Laughed at me, not fearing me,

  And I had no more exciting adventures

  Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,

  But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs

  Of other days and other men.

  And time went on until I lived at Mayer’s restaurant,

  Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,

  Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .

  There is a mighty shade here who sings

  Of one named Beatrice;*

  And I see now that the force that made him great

  Drove me to the dregs of life.

  HOMER CLAPP

  OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate

  Refused me the parting kiss,

  Saying we should be engaged before that;

  And just with a distant clasp of the hand

  She bade me good-night, as I brought her home

  From the skating rink or the revival.

  No sooner did my departing footsteps die away

  Than Lucius Atherton,

  (So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)

  Stole in at her window, or took her riding

  Behind his spanking team of bays

  Into the country.

  The shock of it made me settle down,

  And I put all the money I got from my father’s estate

  Into the canning factory, to get the job

  Of head accountant, and lost it all.

  And then I knew I was one of Life’s fools,

  Whom only death would treat as the equal

  Of other men, making me feel like a man.

  DEACON TAYLOR

  I BELONGED to the church,

  And to the party of prohibition;

  And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.

  In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,

  For every noon for thirty years,

  I slipped behind the prescription partition

  In Trainor’s drug store

  And poured a generous drink

  From the bottle marked

  “Spiritus frumenti.”*

  SAM HOOKEY

  I RAN away from home with the circus,

  Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,

  The lion tamer.

  One time, having starved the lions

  For more than a day,

  I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus

  And Leo and Gypsy.

  Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,

  And killed me.

  On entering these regions

  I met a shadow who cursed me,

  And said it served me right. . . .

  It was Robespierre!*

  COONEY POTTER

  I INHERITED forty acres from my Father

  And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters

  From dawn to dusk, I acquired

  A thousand acres. But not content,

  Wishing to own two thousand acres,

  I bustled through the years with axe and plow,

  Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.

  Squire Higbee wrongs me to say

  That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.

  Eating hot pie and gulping coffee

  During the scorching hours of harvest time

  Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year.

  FIDDLER JONES

  THE earth keeps some vibration going

  There in your heart, and that is you.

  And if the people find you can fiddle,

  Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.

  What do you see, a harvest of clover?

  Or a meadow to walk through to the river?

  The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands

  For beeves hereafter ready for market;

  Or else you hear the rustle of skirts

  Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.

  To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust

  Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;

  They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy

  Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”

  How could I till my forty acres

  Not to speak of getting more,

  With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos

  Stirred in my brain by crows and robins

  And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?

  And I never started to plow in my life

  That some one did not stop in the road

  And take me away to a dance or picnic.

  I ended up with forty acres;

  I ended up with a broken fiddle—

  And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,

  And not a single regret.

  NELLIE CLARK

  I WAS only eight years old;

  And before I grew up and knew what it meant

  I had no words for it, except

  That I was frightened and told my Mother;

  And that my Father got a pistol

  And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,

  Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.

  Nevertheless the story clung to me.

  But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,

  Was a newcomer and never heard
it

  Till two years after we were married.

  Then he considered himself cheated,

  And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.

  Well, he deserted me, and I died

  The following winter.

  LOUISE SMITH

  HERBERT broke our engagement of eight years

  When Annabelle returned to the village

  From the Seminary, ah me!

  If I had let my love for him alone

  It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow—

  Who knows?—filling my life with healing fragrance.

  But I tortured it, I poisoned it,

  I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred—

  Deadly ivy instead of clematis.

  And my soul fell from its support,

  Its tendrils tangled in decay.

  Do not let the will play gardener to your soul

  Unless you are sure

  It is wiser than your soul’s nature.

  HERBERT MARSHALL

  ALL your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me

  Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness

  Of spirit and contempt of your soul’s rights

  Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.

  You really grew to hate me for love of me,

  Because I was your soul’s happiness,

  Formed and tempered

  To solve your life for you, and would not.

  But you were my misery. If you had been

  My happiness would I not have clung to you?

  This is life’s sorrow:

  That one can be happy only where two are;

  And that our hearts are drawn to stars

  Which want us not.

  GEORGE GRAY

  I HAVE studied many times

  The marble which was chiseled for me—

  A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

  In truth it pictures not my destination

  But my life.

  For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;

  Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;

  Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

  Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

  And now I know that we must lift the sail

  And catch the winds of destiny

  Wherever they drive the boat.

  To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,

  But life without meaning is the torture

  Of restlessness and vague desire—

  It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

  HON. HENRY BENNETT

  IT never came into my mind

  Until I was ready to die

  That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.

  For I was seventy, she was thirty-five,

  And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband

  Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.

  For all my wisdom and grace of mind

  Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,

  But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength

  Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat

  Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch

  One time at Georgie Kirby’s.

  So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard—

  That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!

  GRIFFY THE COOPER

  THE cooper should know about tubs.

  But I learned about life as well,

  And you who loiter around these graves

  Think you know life.

  You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,

  In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.

  You cannot lift yourself to its rim

  And see the outer world of things,

  And at the same time see yourself.

  You are submerged in the tub of yourself—

  Taboos and rules and appearances,

  Are the staves of your tub.

  Break them and dispel the witchcraft

  Of thinking your tub is life!

  And that you know life!

  SERSMITH THE DENTIST

  DO you think that odes and sermons,

  And the ringing of church bells,

  And the blood of old men and young men,

  Martyred for the truth they saw

  With eyes made bright by faith in God,

  Accomplished the world’s great reformations?

  Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic

  Would have been heard if the chattel slave

  Had crowned the dominant dollar,*

  In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin,

  And steam and rolling mills and iron

  And telegraphs and white free labor?

  Do you think that Daisy Fraser

  Had been put out and driven out

  If the canning works had never needed

  Her little house and lot?

  Or do you think the poker room

  Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar

  Had been closed up if the money lost

  And spent for beer had not been turned,

  By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes

  For larger sales of shoes and blankets,

  And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles?

  Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth

  Which must be propped with gold.

  A. D. BLOOD

  IF you in the village think that my work was a good one,

  Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,

  And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,

  In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;

  Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora,

  And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier,

  Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?

  ROBERT SOUTHEY BURKE

  I SPENT my money trying to elect you Mayor

  A. D. Blood.

  I lavished my admiration upon you,

  You were to my mind the almost perfect man.

  You devoured my personality,

  And the idealism of my youth,

  And the strength of a high-souled fealty.

  And all my hopes for the world,

  And all my beliefs in Truth,

  Were smelted up in the blinding heat

  Of my devotion to you,

  And molded into your image.

  And then when I found what you were:

  That your soul was small

  And your words were false

  As your blue-white porcelain teeth,

  And your cuffs of celluloid,

  I hated the love I had for you,

  I hated myself, I hated you

  For my wasted soul, and wasted youth.

  And I say to all, beware of ideals,

  Beware of giving your love away

  To any man alive.

  DORA WILLIAMS

  WHEN Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me

  I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,

  Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.

  He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.

  A year passed and one day they found him dead.

  That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.

  After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.

  I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate

  Went mad about me—so another fortune.

  He died one night right in my arms, you know.

  (I saw his purple face for years thereafter.)

  There was almost a scandal. I moved on,

  This time to Paris. I was now a woman,

  Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.

  My sweet apartment near the Champs Élysées

  Became a center for all sorts of people,

  Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles,

  Where we spoke French an
d German, Italian, English.

  I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.

  We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.

  Now in the Campo Santo* overlooking

  The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds,

  See what they chiseled: “Contessa Navigato

  Implora eterna quiete.”*

  MRS. WILLIAMS

  I WAS the milliner

  Talked about, lied about,

  Mother of Dora,

  Whose strange disappearance

  Was charged to her rearing.

  My eye quick to beauty

  Saw much beside ribbons

  And buckles and feathers

  And leghorns and felts,

  To set off sweet faces,

  And dark hair and gold.

  One thing I will tell you

  And one I will ask:

  The stealers of husbands

  Wear powder and trinkets,

  And fashionable hats.

  Wives, wear them yourselves.

  Hats may make divorces—

  They also prevent them.

  Well now, let me ask you:

  If all of the children, born here in Spoon River

  Had been reared by the County, somewhere on a farm;

  And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom

  To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished,

  Do you think that Spoon River

  Had been any the worse?

  WILLIAM AND EMILY

  THERE is something about Death

  Like love itself!

  If with some one with whom you have known passion,

  And the glow of youthful love,

  You also, after years of life

  Together, feel the sinking of the fire,

  And thus fade away together,

  Gradually, faintly, delicately,

  As it were in each other’s arms,

  Passing from the familiar room—

  That is a power of unison between souls

  Like love itself!

  THE CIRCUIT JUDGE

  TAKE note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions

  Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain—