A Year's Spinning

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1. My Ancestors A barefoot boy I went to school To save a cobbler’s fee, For though the porridge pot was full A frugal folk were we; We baked our bannocks, spun our wool, And counted each bawbee. We reft our living from the soil, And I was shieling bred; My father’s hands were warped with toil, And […]...
2. I Years had been from Home I Years had been from Home And now before the Door I dared not enter, lest a Face I never saw before Stare solid into mine And ask my Business there “My Business but a Life I left Was such remaining there?” I leaned upon the Awe I lingered with Before The Second like an […]...
3. Mothers Are a Special Gift Mothers are a special gift sent From God above, They bless us with their nurturing, And fill us with their love. They pick us up when we are down, And when we’re sad they know, They’re always there to lend a hand, And guide us as we go. And mothers are like special jewels That […]...
4. After a hundred years After a hundred years Nobody knows the Place Agony that enacted there Motionless as Peace Weeds triumphant ranged Strangers strolled and spelled At the lone Orthography Of the Elder Dead Winds of Summer Fields Recollect the way Instinct picking up the Key Dropped by memory...
5. Mother o' Mine If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother […]...
6. A Stone Is Nobody's A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner. Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the Rest of his life. His mother asked why. He said, because it’s held captive, because it is Captured. Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know Whether it’s […]...
7. September 1913 What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they […]...
8. Twenty-Four Years Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes. (Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave in labour.) In the groin of the natural doorway I crouched like a tailor Sewing a shroud for a journey By the light of the meat-eating sun. Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun, With my […]...
9. At Eighty Years As nothingness draws near How I can see Inexorably clear My vanity. My sum of worthiness Always so small, Dwindles from less to less To none at all. As grisly destiny Claims me at last, How grievous seem to me Sins of my past! How keen a conscience edge Can come to be! How pitiless […]...
10. The Farewell Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings Where the noisome insect stings Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air; Gone, […]...
11. 522. Song-The Cardin o't, the Spinning o't I COFT a stane o’ haslock woo’, To mak a wab to Johnie o’t; For Johnie is my only jo, I loe him best of onie yet. Chorus.-The cardin’ o’t, the spinnin’ o’t, The warpin’ o’t, the winnin’ o’t; When ilka ell cost me a groat, The tailor staw the lynin’ o’t. For tho’ his […]...
12. A Jewish Cemetery In Germany On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery, A Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs, Abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer Nor the voice of lamentation is heard there For the dead praise not the Lord. Only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves and […]...
13. Crucifix Do not cry for me, Mother, seeing me in the grave. I This greatest hour was hallowed and thandered By angel’s choirs; fire melted sky. He asked his Father:”Why am I abandoned…?” And told his Mother: “Mother, do not cry…” II Magdalena struggled, cried and moaned. Peter sank into the stone trance… Only there, where […]...
14. On that dear Frame the Years had worn On that dear Frame the Years had worn Yet precious as the House In which We first experienced Light The Witnessing, to Us Precious! It was conceiveless fair As Hands the Grave had grimed Should softly place within our own Denying that they died....
15. Two Years Later Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned? I could have warned you; but you are young, So we speak a different tongue. O you will take whatever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, Suffer as […]...
16. Benediction Bless this little heart, this white soul that has won the kiss of Heaven for our earth. He loves the light of the sun, he loves the sight of his Mother’s face. He has not learned to despise the dust, and to hanker after Gold. Clasp him to your heart and bless him. He has […]...
17. A Prayer for a Mother's Birthday Lord Jesus, Thou hast known A mother’s love and tender care: And Thou wilt hear, while for my own Mother most dear I make this birthday prayer. Protect her life, I pray, Who gave the gift of life to me; And may she know, from day to day, The deepening glow of Life that comes […]...
18. The Lake In spring of youth it was my lot To haunt of the wide world a spot The which I could not love the less- So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that towered around. But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, […]...
19. Song from Aella O SING unto my roundelay, O drop the briny tear with me; Dance no more at holyday, Like a running river be: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. Black his cryne as the winter night, White his rode as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, […]...
20. Since Years Ago For Evermore SINCE years ago for evermore My cedar ship I drew to shore; And to the road and riverbed And the green, nodding reeds, I said Mine ignorant and last farewell: Now with content at home I dwell, And now divide my sluggish life Betwixt my verses and my wife: In vain; for when the lamp […]...
21. On why it is necessary to talk kindly to frogs i met a frog in my garden today Lurking under a stone – it said There used to be a pond here I know i said i had to dig it up Pity said the frog and looked at me As if i was the thickest mortal A garden without water it croaked Is worse […]...
22. The Routine Things Around The House When Mother died I thought: now I’ll have a death poem. That was unforgivable. Yet I’ve since forgiven myself As sons are able to do Who’ve been loved by their mothers. I stared into the coffin Knowing how long she’d live, How many lifetimes there are In the sweet revisions of memory. It’s hard to […]...
23. I had been hungry, all the Years I had been hungry, all the Years My Noon had Come to dine I trembling drew the Table near And touched the Curious Wine ‘Twas this on Tables I had seen When turning, hungry, Home I looked in Windows, for the Wealth I could not hope for Mine I did not know the ample Bread […]...
24. Europe, the 72d and 73d years of These States 1 SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags-its hands tight to the throats of kings. O hope and faith! O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives! O many a sicken’d heart! Turn back […]...
25. Psalm 115 The true God our refuge; or, Idolatry reproved. Not to ourselves, who are but dust, Not to ourselves is glory due, Eternal God, thou only just, Thou only gracious, wise, and true. Shine forth in all thy dreadful name; Why should a heathen’s haughty tongue Insult us, and, to raise our shame, Say, “Where’s the […]...
26. Child Lover Drunk or sober Uncle Jim Played the boy; Never glum or sour or grim, Oozin’ joy. Most folks thought he was no good, Blamin’ him; But where kiddies were, you could Bank on Jim. Sure he allus hated work, Lovin’ play. “Jest a good fer nuthin’ jerk,” Lots would say. Yet how the children fell […]...
27. The Truth the Dead Know For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 And my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, Refusing the stiff procession to the grave, Letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I […]...
28. They All Want to Play Hamlet THEY all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers-O flowers, flowers […]...
29. 216. Song-Duncan Davison THERE was a lass, they ca’d her Meg, And she held o’er the moors to spin; There was a lad that follow’d her, They ca’d him Duncan Davison. The moor was dreigh, and Meg was skeigh, Her favour Duncan could na win; For wi’ the rock she wad him knock, And aye she shook the […]...
30. The Angel's Kiss An angel stood beside the bed Where lay the living and the dead. He gave the mother her who died A kiss that Christ the Crucified Had sent to greet the weary soul When, worn and faint, it reached its goal. He gave the infant kisses twain, One on the breast, one on the brain. […]...
31. Two Hundred Years After Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter’s night, (Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight) Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky He watched a nosing lorry grinding on, And straggling files of men; when these were gone, A double limber and six mules went by, Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud To […]...
32. Sonnet 23 – Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead, Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine? And would the sun for thee more coldly shine Because of grave-damps falling round my head? I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine- But. . . so much to […]...
33. The Lone Trail Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it, Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit. Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by; The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die. The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; […]...
34. Death Death is a road our dearest friends have gone; Why with such leaders, fear to say, “Lead on?” Its gate repels, lest it too soon be tried, But turns in balm on the immortal side. Mothers have passed it: fathers, children; men Whose like we look not to behold again; Women that smiled away their […]...
35. The Convalescent . . . So I walked among the willows very quietly all night; There was no moon at all, at all; no timid star alight; There was no light at all, at all; I wint from tree to tree, And I called him as his mother called, but he nivver answered me. Oh I called […]...
36. The Smile on the Face of a Kouros This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that Might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel He was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps, And this carved stone remembers him Not as he may have looked, but as if to define The naked virtue the stone describes as his. One foot is […]...
37. Letter to My Lover After Seven Years You gave me the child That seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poems, Five years of peace & two of pain. You gave me darkness, light, laughter & the certain knowledge That we someday die. You gave me seven years During which the cells of my […]...
38. Work And Contemplation The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole; She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines too subtly twisted to unroll Out to a perfect thread. I […]...
39. To My Own Minature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age And I was once like this! that glowing cheek Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze Dies o’er the sleeping surface! twenty years Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends Who once so dearly prized this miniature, And loved it for its likeness, some are gone […]...
40. A Nativity 1914-18 The Babe was laid in the Manger Between the gentle kine All safe from cold and danger “But it was not so with mine, (With mine! With mine!) “Is it well with the child, is it well?” The waiting mother prayed. “For I know not how he fell, And I know not where he […]...