Spoon River Anthology

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley,
The weak-willed, the strong, the clown, the drunk, the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.

One passed away from fever,
One was trapped in a mine fire,
One got killed in a fight,
One died in jail,
One fell from a bridge working for his kids and wife—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie, and Edith,
The caring heart, the simple soul, the loud one, the proud one, the happy one?—
All, all are sleeping on the hill.

One died in shameful childbirth,
One from unrequited love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One from shattered pride, searching for what she truly wanted;
One, after a life in far-off London and Paris,
Was brought to her little resting place by Ella and Kate and Mag—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
And Major Walker who spoke
With the wise men of the revolution?—
All, all are sleeping on the hill.

They brought back their dead sons from the war,
And daughters crushed by life,
And their children left fatherless, crying—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where is Old Fiddler Jones,
Who played with life for all his ninety years,
Facing the sleet with an open chest,
Drinking, partying, thinking of neither wife nor family,
Nor money, nor love, nor heaven?
Look! he talks about the fish fries from long ago,
About the horse races from long ago at Clary’s Grove,
About what Abe Lincoln said
One time in Springfield.

Here I lie close to the grave
Of Old Bill Piersol,
Who got rich trading with the Indians, and who
Later took advantage of bankruptcy law
And came out of it wealthier than before.
I, tired of hard work and poverty,
Watched how Old Bill and others grew rich
Robbed a traveler one night near Proctor’s Grove,
Unintentionally killing him in the process,
For which I was tried and hanged.
That was my way of going bankrupt.
Now we who took on bankruptcy in our own ways
Rest peacefully side by side.

Have you seen a man walking through the village
with downcast eyes and a worn-out face?
That’s my husband who, through hidden cruelty
that can never be revealed, stole my youth and my beauty;
Until finally, wrinkled and with yellowed teeth,
and with broken pride and shameful humility,
I sank into the grave.
But what do you think eats away at my husband’s heart?
The memory of what I was, the face of what he made me!
These are driving him to the place where I lie.
In death, therefore, I am avenged.

She took my strength minute by minute,
She took my life hour by hour,
She drained me like a feverish moon
That pulls at the spinning world.
The days passed like shadows,
The minutes spun like stars.
She took the pity from my heart,
And turned it into smiles.
She was a block of sculptor's clay,
My secret thoughts were fingers:
They raced behind her thoughtful brow
And carved it deep with pain.
They shaped her lips, sagged her cheeks,
And made her eyes droop with sorrow.
My soul had entered into the clay,
Fighting like seven devils.
It didn’t belong to me, it didn’t belong to her;
She held it, but its struggles
Fashioned a face she hated,
And a face I feared to see.
I banged the windows, shook the locks.
I hid in a corner
And then she died and haunted me,
And hunted me for life.

If a guy could bite the giant hand
That grabs and wrecks him,
Like I was bitten by a rat
While showing off my patent trap,
In my hardware store that day.
But a guy can never get back
At the monstrous ogre called Life.
You step into the room—that’s being born;
And then you have to live—work out your soul,
Aha! the bait you want is in sight:
A woman with money you want to marry,
Status, a place, or power in the world.
But there’s work to be done and challenges to conquer—
Oh, yes! the wires that block the bait.
Finally, you get in—but you hear a footstep:
The ogre, Life, enters the room,
(He was waiting and heard the click of the spring)
To watch you nibble the amazing cheese,
And glare with his burning eyes at you,
And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,
Running back and forth in the trap,
Until your misery bores him.

They have carved on my stone the words:
“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.”
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty fluff.
My epitaph should have been:
“Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he fought against life
In which he was defeated.”
While I lived, I couldn’t deal with slanderous tongues,
Now that I’m dead, I have to accept an epitaph
Carved by a fool!

My life could have flourished in every direction
If not for a harsh wind that held back my growth
On the side you in the village could see.
From this dust, I raise a voice of protest:
You never saw my thriving side!
Oh, you people, you are truly foolish
Not understanding the ways of the wind
And the invisible forces
That control the course of life.

Henry got me pregnant,
Knowing that I couldn’t give life
Without sacrificing my own.
So, in my youth, I stepped into the grave.
Traveler, it’s believed in the village where I lived
That Henry loved me like a husband should,
But I declare from the grave
That he killed me to satisfy his hatred.

You admire my selflessness, Spoon River,
In raising Irene and Mary,
The orphans of my older sister!
And you criticize Irene and Mary
For looking down on me!
But don’t praise my selflessness.
And don’t blame their disdain;
I raised them, I cared for them, that’s true!—
But I tainted my kindness
With constant reminders of their reliance.

In life, I was the town drunk;
When I died, the priest refused to bury me
In holy ground.
This turned out to be a blessing for me.
The Protestants bought this plot,
And buried my body here,
Next to the grave of banker Nicholas,
And his wife Priscilla.
Take note, you wise and righteous souls,
Of the contradictions in life
That bring honor to the dead who lived in disgrace.

You never wondered, you thoughtless people of Spoon River,
When Chase Henry voted against the bars
To get back at being shut out.
But none of you were sharp enough
To follow my path or trace me home
As Chase’s spiritual sibling.
Do you remember when I took on
The bank and the courthouse crew,
For pocketing the interest on public money?
And when I challenged our community leaders
For making the poor carry the burden of taxes?
And when I confronted the water works
For stealing streets and jacking up rates?
And when I battled the business owners
Who opposed me in these struggles?
Then do you recall:
That staggering up from the ruins of defeat,
And the wreck of a shattered career,
I revealed my final ideal from my cloak,
Hidden from everyone until then,
Like the treasured jawbone of a donkey,
And struck the bank and the water works,
And the business owners with prohibition,
And made Spoon River pay the price
Of the battles that I had lost.

How does this happen, tell me,
That I, the most knowledgeable lawyer,
Who knew Blackstone and Coke
Almost by heart, who gave the greatest speech
The courthouse ever heard, and wrote
A brief that won Justice Breese's praise,
How does it happen, tell me,
That I lie here unremembered, forgotten,
While Chase Henry, the town drunk,
Has a marble headstone topped with an urn
Where Nature, in a twist of irony,
Has planted a flowering weed?

Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;
Coolbaugh Whedon, editor of the Argus;
Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church;
A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River;
And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club—
Pay attention to Cambronne’s last words,
Standing with the brave few
Of Napoleon’s guard on Mount Saint Jean
At the battlefield of Waterloo,
When Maitland, the Englishman, called out to them:
“Surrender, brave Frenchmen!”—
There at the end of the day with the battle hopelessly lost,
And crowds of men no longer the army
Of the great Napoleon
Streamed from the field like torn strips
Of thunder clouds in the storm.
Well, what Cambronne said to Maitland
Before the English fire smoothed the brow of the hill
Against the fading light of day
I say to you, and all of you,
And to you, O world.
And I urge you to carve it
On my stone.

Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, lawyer,
And Nig, his dog, loyal companion, comfort, and friend.
Down the gray road, friends, kids, men and women,
Passing one by one out of life, left me until I was alone
With Nig as my partner, bedmate; buddy in drinking.
In the early days of my life, I knew ambition and saw glory,
The woman who survives me caught my soul
With a trap that bled me to death,
Until I, once strong-willed, lay broken, indifferent,
Living with Nig in a room behind a dingy office.
Under my jaw, the bony nose of Nig is snuggled
Our story is lost in silence. Go by, crazy world!

I know he said I captured his soul
With a trap that bled him to death.
And all the guys loved him,
And most of the women felt sorry for him.
But imagine you’re a true lady, with refined tastes,
And you can't stand the smell of whiskey and onions,
And the lines of Wordsworth’s “Ode” echo in your mind,
While he walks around from morning till night
Reciting bits of that common verse;
“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”
And then, imagine;
You’re a woman of means,
And the only man you’re allowed to marry
Is the very man who disgusts you
Every time you think about it while you think about it
Every time you see him?
That's why I sent him away from home
To live with his dog in a cramped room
Behind his office.

Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers weren't wasted,
Your love wasn't all in vain.
I owe whatever I became in life
To your hope that never gave up on me,
To your love that still saw the good in me.
Dear Emily Sparks, let me share the story.
I inherited the legacy of my father and mother;
The milliner’s daughter caused me trouble,
And I stepped out into the world,
Where I faced every danger known
Of wine and women and the pleasures of life.
One night, in a room on the Rue de Rivoli,
I was drinking wine with a black-eyed prostitute,
And tears filled my eyes.
She thought they were romantic tears and smiled
At her perceived victory over me.
But my mind was three thousand miles away,
Back in the days when you taught me in Spoon River.
And just because you could no longer love me,
Nor pray for me, nor write me letters,
The eternal silence of you spoke instead.
And the black-eyed prostitute mistook the tears for her own,
As well as the misleading kisses I gave her.
Somehow, from that moment, I had a new vision,
Dear Emily Sparks!

Where is my boy, my boy
In what distant part of the world?
The boy I cared for most in school?—
I, the teacher, the old maid, the pure-hearted,
Who considered them all my children.
Did I know my boy well,
Imagining him as a spirit on fire,
Active, always reaching for more?
Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed
Through many watchful nights,
Do you remember the letter I sent you
About the beautiful love of Christ?
And whether you ever received it or not,
My boy, wherever you are,
Work for your soul’s sake,
So that all the clay in you, all the imperfect parts,
May transform in the fire of you,
Until the fire is nothing but light!…
Nothing but light!

Only the chemist can say for sure, and not even always the chemist,
What will happen when mixing
Liquids or solids.
And who can predict
How men and women will relate
To one another, or what kind of children they will have?
There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
Good people but terrible to each other;
He was like oxygen, she was like hydrogen,
Their son, a destructive fire.
I, Trainor, the pharmacist, a miser with chemicals,
Died while conducting an experiment,
Lived without ever marrying.

Did you ever hear about Editor Whedon
Giving any of the money he made
From supporting candidates for office?
Or from promoting the canning factory
To get people to invest?
Or from covering up the truth about the bank,
When it was falling apart and about to break?
Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge
Helping anyone other than the “Q” railroad,
Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley
Give any part of their salary, earned by staying quiet,
Or speaking out as the leaders wanted them to,
To help build the water works?
But I—Daisy Fraser, who always walked
Down the street through rows of nods and smiles,
And coughs and comments like “there she goes.”
Never was taken before Justice Arnett
Without contributing ten dollars and costs
To the school fund of Spoon River!

Their spirits touched mine
Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
I closed my eyes and felt their energy vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes
Brushed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
And when they turned their heads;
And when their clothes clung to them,
Or fell from them, in elegant drapes.
Their spirits observed my ecstasy
With wide looks of starry indifference.
Their spirits watched my suffering;
They consumed it as if it were the water of life;
With flushed cheeks, shining eyes,
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits glisten,
Like the wings of a butterfly suddenly catching sunlight.
And they called out to me for life, life, life.
But in grabbing life for myself,
In seizing and crushing their souls,
Like a child squashing grapes and drinking
The purple juice from its palms,
I arrived at this wingless void,
Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,
Nor the rhythm of life are known.

I’m Minerva, the village poet,
Mocked and ridiculed by the locals on the street
Because of my large body, squinting eye, and unsteady gait,
And even more so when “Butch” Weldy
Captured me after a cruel chase.
He left me to deal with Doctor Meyers;
And I fell into a kind of death, feeling numb from my feet up,
Like someone wading deeper and deeper into a freezing stream.
Will someone please go to the village newspaper,
And collect the poems I wrote into a book?—
I longed so much for love
I craved so deeply for life!

You wouldn't believe, would you
That I came from good Welsh ancestry?
That I had better blood than the white trash here?
And a more direct lineage than the
New Englanders and Virginians of Spoon River?
You wouldn’t think I had gone to school
And read some books.
You saw me only as a worn-down man
With tangled hair and beard
And torn clothes.
Sometimes a man’s life becomes a cancer
From being hurt and constantly hurt,
And swells into a purplish mass
Like growths on stalks of corn.
Here I was, a carpenter, stuck in a bog of life
Where I walked in thinking it was a meadow,
With a messy wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
Whom you tormented and pushed to her death.
So I crawled, crawled, like a snail through the days
Of my life.
You no longer hear my footsteps in the morning,
Echoing on the empty sidewalk
Going to the grocery store for a little cornmeal
And a nickel's worth of bacon.

After I found faith and settled down
They got me a job at the canning factory,
And every morning I had to fill
The tank in the yard with gasoline,
That fueled the blow torches in the sheds
To heat the soldering irons.
And I climbed a shaky ladder to do it,
Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring,
The air got still and seemed to swell,
And I shot up when the tank exploded,
And I fell back down with both legs broken,
And my eyes burned like a couple of fried eggs.
Because someone left a blow torch going,
And something sucked the flame into the tank.
The Circuit Judge said whoever did it
Was a co-worker of mine, so
Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.
And I sat on the witness stand as blind
As a bat, repeating over and over,
“I didn’t know him at all.”

No other guy, except maybe Doc Hill,
Did more for people in this town than I did.
All the weak, the disabled, the careless,
And those who couldn’t pay came to me.
I was the kind-hearted, easy-going Doctor Meyers.
I was healthy, happy, and financially secure,
Blessed with a compatible partner, my kids grown,
All married, thriving in life.
And then one night, Minerva, the poet,
Came to me in her distress, crying.
I tried to help her, but she died—
They charged me, the newspapers shamed me,
My wife died of a broken heart.
And pneumonia took me out.

He fought against it his whole life
The newspapers slandered him ruthlessly;
That he wasn’t responsible for Minerva’s downfall,
But only tried to assist her.
Poor guy so lost in his wrongdoings he couldn’t see
That even trying to help her, as he claimed,
He had broken both human and divine law.
To those walking by, an old warning for you:
If you want your ways to be pleasant,
And all your paths peaceful,
Love God and follow his commandments.

I was the first casualty of the battle at Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet hit my heart
I wished I had stayed home and gone to jail
For stealing Curl Trenary's pigs,
Instead of running away and joining the army.
I'd rather be in the county jail
Than lying under this marble figure with wings,
And this stone pedestal that says, “For my country.”
What does that even mean, anyway?

Knowlt Hoheimer ran away to join the war
The day before Curl Trenary
Got a warrant from Justice Arnett
For stealing pigs.
But that’s not why he became a soldier.
He saw me with Lucius Atherton.
We argued, and I told him never again
To get in my way.
Then he stole the pigs and went off to war—
Behind every soldier is a woman.

Out of a cell into this dark space—
The end at twenty-five!
I couldn’t express what was stirring inside me,
And the village thought I was a fool.
But at the beginning, there was a clear vision,
A strong and urgent purpose in my soul
That pushed me to try to memorize
The Encyclopedia Britannica!

Do the guys and girls still go to Siever’s
For cider after school in late September?
Or gather hazelnuts in the thickets
On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts start?
I played many times with the laughing girls and boys
Along the road and over the hills
When the sun was setting and the air was cool,
Stopping to hit the walnut tree
Standing bare against a fiery sunset.
Now, the smell of autumn smoke,
And the falling acorns,
And the echoes in the valleys
Bring dreams of life.
They linger around me.
They ask me:
Where are those laughing friends?
How many are with me, how many
In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s,
And in the woods that look over
The calm water?

Not in that wasted garden
Where bodies are absorbed into grass
That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens
That bear no fruit—
There, where along the shaded paths
Useless sighs are heard,
And pointless dreams are dreamed
Of intimate connections with departed souls—
But here under the apple tree
I loved and watched and pruned
With weathered hands
Through the long, long years;
Here under the roots of this northern spy
To engage in the chemical changes and cycles of life,
Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,
And into the living tributes
Of redder apples!

I walked up and down the streets
Here and there, day and night,
During all hours of the night, taking care of the sick poor.
Do you know why?
My wife despised me, my son was a wreck.
So I turned to the people and shared my love with them.
It was so nice to see the crowds gathered on the lawns at my funeral,
And hear them express their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul shook, barely able
To cling to the railing of my new life
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,
Hiding her grief!

In my Spanish cloak, And an old slouch hat, And felt overshoes, And Tyke, my loyal dog, And my knotted hickory cane, I moved quietly with a bull’s-eye lantern From door to door in the square, As the midnight stars spun around, And the bell in the steeple softly rang With the blowing of the wind; And the tired steps of old Doc Hill Sounded like someone walking in their sleep, And a distant rooster crowed. And now another is watching Spoon River Like others have before me. And here we rest, Doc Hill and I Where no one breaks in and steals, And no eye needs to keep watch.

Maurice, don’t cry, I'm not here beneath this pine tree.
The gentle spring air rustles through the soft grass,
The stars shine, the whippoorwill calls,
But you grieve, while my soul is blissfully
In the blessed Nirvana of eternal light!
Go to the kind heart that is my husband
Who thinks about what he calls our guilty love:—
Tell him that my love for you, just like my love for him
Created my fate—that through the flesh
I gained spirit, and through spirit, peace.
There’s no marriage in heaven
But there is love.

My dad, who ran the wagon shop
And got rich from shoeing horses,
Sent me to the University of Montreal.
I didn’t learn anything and came back home,
Wandering the fields with Bert Kessler,
Hunting quail and snipe.
At Thompson’s Lake, the trigger of my gun
Got caught on the side of the boat
And shot a huge hole through my heart.
A loving father placed this marble monument over me,
Featuring a woman’s figure
Carved by an Italian artist.
They say the ashes of my namesake
Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius,
Somewhere near Rome.

From Bindle’s opera house in the village
To Broadway is a big leap.
But I tried to take it, driven by ambition
When I was sixteen,
Seeing “East Lynne,” performed here in the village
By Ralph Barrett, the rising
Romantic actor, who captivated me.
True, I went back home feeling like a failure,
When Ralph vanished in New York,
Leaving me alone in the city—
But life brought him down too.
In this whole place of silence
There are no kindred spirits.
How I wish Duse could stand among the sadness
Of these quiet fields
And read these words.

We fought that morning,
Because he was sixty-five and I was thirty,
And I was anxious and weighed down by the child
Whose birth I feared.
I thought about the last letter written to me
By that estranged young person
Whose betrayal I had hidden
By marrying the older man.
Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
Through the darkness that clouded my vision,
I still see the flickering light of these words:
“And Jesus said to him, Truly
I tell you, today you will
Be with me in paradise.”

Father, you can never know
The pain that struck my heart
For my disobedience, the moment I felt
The relentless wheel of the engine
Dig into the screaming flesh of my leg.
As they took me to Widow Morris’s home
I could see the schoolhouse in the valley
That I skipped to sneak rides on the trains.
I prayed to live long enough to ask for your forgiveness—
And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!
From the peace of that moment, I have found infinite happiness.
You were wise to carve for me:
“Taken from the evil to come.”

Did you ever find out
Which one of the O’Brien boys it was
Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand?
There when the flags were red and white
In the breeze and “Bucky” Estil
Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River
From Vicksburg by Captain Harris;
And the lemonade stands were busy
And the band was playing,
Only to have it all ruined
By a piece of the cap getting shot under the skin of my hand,
And the boys all crowding around me saying:
“You’ll get lockjaw, Charlie, for sure.”
Oh, dear! oh, dear!
Which one of my friends could have done it?

I was sixteen, and I had the worst nightmares,
And spots in my vision, and felt anxious and weak.
I couldn't remember the books I had read,
Like Frank Drummer who could memorize page after page.
My back hurt, and I kept worrying,
I was embarrassed and stumbled through my lessons,
And when it was my turn to recite, I’d forget
Everything I had studied.
Then I saw Dr. Weese’s ad,
And I read everything in it,
As if he somehow knew me;
And about the nightmares I couldn't escape.
So I thought I was destined for an early death.
I stressed until I developed a cough,
And then the nightmares stopped.
And then I slept soundly without dreams
Here on the hill by the river.

As a boy, Theodore, you spent long hours
On the muddy shore of Spoon
With your deep-set eyes fixed on the entrance of the crawfish’s burrow,
Waiting for him to show up, pushing forward,
First his waving antennae, like bits of hay,
And soon his body, colored like soapstone,
Sparkling with jet-black eyes.
And you wondered in a deep thought
What he knew, what he wanted, and why he even lived.
But later your gaze searched for men and women
Hiding in the burrows of fate in big cities,
Looking for their souls to emerge,
So that you could see
How they lived, and for what purpose,
And why they kept moving so busily
Along the sandy path where water runs dry
As summer fades.

The Prohibitionists made me the Town Marshal
When the bars were voted out,
Because back when I was a drinker,
Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede
At the sawmill near Maple Grove.
And they wanted a tough guy,
Serious, righteous, strong, brave,
And someone who hated bars and drinkers,
To maintain law and order in the village.
They gave me a loaded cane
With which I hit Jack McGuire
Right before he pulled the gun that killed me.
The Prohibitionists wasted their money
Trying to hang him, because in a dream
I appeared to one of the twelve jurors
And told him the whole secret story.
Fourteen years was enough for killing me.

They would have lynched me
If I hadn't been secretly taken away
To the jail in Peoria.
And still, I was on my way home,
Carrying my jug, a little tipsy,
When Logan, the marshal, stopped me
Called me a drunken dog and shook me
And, when I cursed him, hit me
With that Prohibition-loaded cane—
All of this happened before I shot him.
They would have hanged me if not for this:
My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was working to get
Old Thomas Rhodes off for wrecking the bank,
And the judge was a friend of
Rhodes and wanted him to go free,
And Kinsey offered to back off on Rhodes
For fourteen years for me.
And the deal was struck.
I served my time
And learned to read and write.

When Fort Sumter fell and the war started
I shouted out in deep sorrow:
“O glorious republic, no more!”
When they buried my soldier son
To the sound of trumpets and drums
My heart shattered under the weight
Of eighty years, and I cried:
“Oh, son who died for an unjust cause!
Killed in the struggle for Freedom!”
And I lay down here under the grass.
And now from the battlements of time, look:
Thirty million souls are joined together
In the love of a greater truth,
Engaged in the hope of the birth
Of a new Beauty,
Born from Brotherhood and Wisdom.
I, with spiritual eyes, see the Transformation
Before you do.
But you endless flock of golden eagles nesting ever higher,
Soaring ever higher, the sunlight beckoning
From lofty realms of Thought,
Forgive the blindness of the departed owl.

I wasn’t liked by the villagers,
But that’s only because I spoke my mind,
And confronted those who wronged me
With honest words, not hiding or nurturing
Any secret sorrows or grudges.
That act of the Spartan boy is highly praised,
Who concealed the wolf under his cloak,
Letting it devour him without complaint.
I think it’s braver to pull the wolf out
And fight it openly, even in the street,
Amid dust and cries of pain.
The tongue can be a wild thing—
But silence poisons the soul.
Let anyone criticize me—I’m okay with it.

Weren't you ashamed, fellow citizens,
When my estate was settled and everyone found out
How little I left behind?—
You who pressured me in life,
To donate, donate, donate to the churches, to the needy,
To the village!—me who had already given so much.
And don’t think I didn’t realize
That the pipe organ, which I donated to the church,
Played its dedication songs when Deacon Rhodes,
Who devastated and nearly destroyed me,
Worshipped for the first time after his trial?

I leaned against the mantel, feeling sick, sick,
Thinking about my failure, staring into the abyss,
Weak from the midday heat.
A church bell rang mournfully in the distance,
I heard a baby cry,
And the coughing of John Yarnell,
Stuck in bed, feverish, feverish, dying,
Then my wife's urgent voice:
“Be careful, the potatoes are burning!”
I could smell them . . . then came a wave of disgust.
I pulled the trigger . . . darkness . . . light . . .
Unspeakable regret . . . reaching for the world again.
Too late! That’s how I ended up here,
With lungs for breathing . . . but you can’t breathe here with lungs,
Though you have to breathe.
What’s the point of escaping the world,
When no soul can ever escape the eternal fate of life?

I could have been as great as George Eliot
But for some bad luck.
Just look at the photograph of me taken by Penniwit,
Chin resting on my hand, with deep-set eyes—
Gray, too, and searching.
But there was the same old dilemma:
Should it be celibacy, marriage, or promiscuity?
Then John Slack, the wealthy druggist, pursued me,
Tempting me with the promise of free time for my novel,
And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
And had no time to write.
It was all over for me, anyway,
When I accidentally stabbed my hand
While washing the baby’s clothes,
And died from lockjaw, a cruel twist of fate.
Listen up, ambitious souls,
Sex is the curse of life.

Do you remember when I stood on the steps
Of the courthouse and talked about free silver,
And Henry George's single tax?
Then do you recall that, when the Peerless Leader
Lost the first battle, I started talking about prohibition,
And got involved in the church?
That was because of my wife,
Who made me envision my downfall
If I didn't show my morality to the people.
Well, she ruined me:
Because the radicals grew suspicious of me,
And the conservatives never fully trusted me—
And here I am, unmourned by all.

I said when they handed me my diploma,
I told myself I would be good
And wise and brave and helpful to others;
I said I would carry the Christian creed
Into my medical practice!
Somehow the world and other doctors
Can sense what’s in your heart as soon as you make
This noble resolution.
And the way it goes is they shut you out.
And no one comes to you except the poor.
And you realize too late that being a doctor
Is just a way to make a living.
And when you’re broke and have to support
The Christian creed along with your wife and kids
All on your back, it’s too much!
That’s why I created the Elixir of Youth,
Which landed me in jail in Peoria
Labeled a swindler and a crook
By the honorable Federal Judge!

I never saw any difference
Between playing cards for money
And selling real estate,
Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
Everything is just a gamble.
Still,
Do you see a man who's hardworking in business?
He will stand before kings!

Here lies the body of Lois Spears,
Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,
Wife of Cyrus Spears,
Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,
Children with bright eyes and strong bodies—
(I was born blind)
I was the happiest of women
As a wife, mother, and homemaker.
Caring for my loved ones,
And making my home
A place of order and generous hospitality:
For I moved through the rooms,
And around the garden
With a sense as keen as sight,
As if there were eyes in my fingertips—
Glory to God in the highest.

It's true, fellow citizens,
That my old case file has been sitting there for years
On a shelf above my head and over
The seat of justice. I say it's true
That file had a metal edge
That grazed my bald head when it fell—
(Somehow I think it was loosened
By the rush of air throughout the town
When the gas tank at the canning plant
Exploded and burned Butch Weldy)—
But let's discuss the points step by step,
And reason this whole situation carefully:
First, I admit my head was injured,
But second, the terrifying thing was this:
The pages of the file flew and scattered
Around me like a deck of cards
In the hands of a magician.
And up until the end I saw those pages
Until I finally said, “Those aren't just pages,
Why can't you see they’re days and days
And the days and days of seventy years?
And why do you torment me with pages
And the little notes on them?

My wife lost her health,
And dwindled until she weighed barely ninety pounds.
Then that woman, whom the men
Called Cleopatra, came along.
And we—we married folks
All broke our vows, myself included.
Years passed and one by one
Death claimed them all in some terrible way
And I was carried along by dreams
Of God’s special grace for me,
And I started to write, write, write, countless pages
About the second coming of Christ.
Then Christ came to me and said,
“Go to 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 row—
My little girl who was born blind!
After that, everything went dark.

Over and over, they would ask me,
While buying wine or beer,
First in Peoria, then later in Chicago,
Denver, San Francisco, New York, wherever I lived,
How I ended up living this life,
And what started it all.
Well, I told them it was a silk dress,
And a promise of marriage from a wealthy man—
(That was Lucius Atherton).
But that wasn't the whole truth.
Imagine a boy who steals an apple
From the display at the grocery store,
And everyone starts calling him a thief,
The editor, minister, judge, and all the people—
“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes,
And he can't find a job, and he can't get food
Without stealing it, so the boy will steal.
It's the way people view the act of stealing that
Turns the boy into what he is.

When my mustache curled,
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight pants
And a diamond stud,
I was a great player of hearts and took many tricks.
But when the gray hairs started to show—
Suddenly! a new generation of girls
Laughed at me, not afraid of me,
And I had no more thrilling adventures
Where I was nearly shot for being a heartless devil,
Just dull affairs, reheated experiences
From other days and other men.
And time passed until I lived at
Mayer’s restaurant,
Eating short orders, a gray, messy,
Toothless, forgotten, rural Don Juan. . . .
There is a powerful shade here who sings
Of someone named Beatrice;
And I see now that the force that made him great
Drove me to the bottom of life.

Often, Aner Clute at the gate Refused to give me a parting kiss, Saying we should be engaged before that; And just with a distant clasp of the hand She said goodnight, as I brought her home From the skating rink or the revival. No sooner did my footsteps fade away Than Lucius Atherton, (So I found out when Aner went to Peoria) Slipped in through her window, or took her for a ride Behind his flashy team of bays Into the countryside. 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 an equal To other men, making me feel like a man.

I was part of the church,
And part of the prohibition party;
And the villagers believed I died from eating watermelon.
In reality, I had cirrhosis of the liver,
Because every day for thirty years,
I sneaked behind the prescription counter
In Trainor’s drug store
And poured myself a generous drink
From the bottle labeled “Spiritus frumenti.”

I ran away from home with the circus,
After falling in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
The lion tamer.
Once, after starving the lions
For over a day,
I went into the cage and started hitting Brutus,
Leo, and Gypsy.
Then Brutus jumped on me,
And killed me.
When I entered this place,
I met a shadow who cursed me,
And said I deserved it. . . .
It was Robespierre!

I inherited forty acres from my dad
And, by working alongside my wife, my two sons, and two daughters
From dawn till dusk, I managed to acquire
A thousand acres.
But I wasn’t satisfied,
Wanting to own two thousand acres,
I hustled through the years with axe and plow,
Struggling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.
Squire Higbee is wrong to say
That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.
Eating hot pie and drinking coffee
During the hot hours of harvest time
Brought me here before I turned sixty.

The earth keeps a vibe going
Right there in your heart, and that’s you.
And if people find out you can play,
Well, then you’ve got to play, for your whole life.
What do you see, a field of clover?
Or a meadow to stroll through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For cattle ready for market down the line;
Or maybe you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter, a cloud of dust
Or swirling leaves meant a terrible drought;
But to me, they looked like Red-Head Sammy
Doing his thing to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I work my forty acres
Not to mention getting more,
With a mix of horns, bassoons, and piccolos
Stirring in my head from crows and robins
And the creak of a windmill—just that?
And I’ve never started to plow in my life
Without someone stopping in the road
And taking 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.

I was only eight years old;
And before I grew up and understood what it meant,
I had no words for it, except
That I was scared and told my
Mom; And that my Dad got a gun
And would have killed Charlie, who was a big kid,
Fifteen years old, if it hadn’t been for his Mom.
Still, the story stuck with me.
But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,
Was new to the village and never heard it
Until two years after we got married.
Then he thought he was cheated,
And the village agreed that I wasn’t really a virgin.
Well, he left me, and I died
The following winter.

Herbert ended our eight-year engagement
when Annabelle came back to the village from the
seminary, oh, how I lament!
If I had just let my love for him be,
it might have blossomed into a beautiful sorrow—
who knows?—filling my life with healing warmth.
But I tortured it, I poisoned it,
I blinded its eyes, and it turned into hatred—
deadly ivy instead of clematis.
And my soul fell from its support,
its tendrils tangled in decay.
Don’t let your will play gardener to your soul
unless you’re sure
it’s wiser than the nature of your soul.

All your pain, Louise, and hatred towards me
Came from your false belief that it was my recklessness
And disregard for your soul’s needs
That caused me to turn to Annabelle and leave you.
You ended up resenting me because you loved me,
Since I was your source of happiness,
Created and shaped
To make your life easier, yet wouldn’t.
But you were my misery.
If you had been
My happiness, would I not have held onto you?
This is life’s sadness:
That one can only be happy where two are;
And that our hearts are drawn to stars
That don’t want us back.

I’ve looked closely many times
At the marble carved for me—
A boat with a furled sail resting in a harbor.
Honestly, it doesn't show my destination
But my life.
I was offered love, but I turned away from its disappointment;
Sorrow knocked on my door, but I was scared;
Ambition called to me, but I feared the risks.
Yet all along, I craved meaning in my life.
And now I understand that we must raise the sail
And catch the winds of fate
No matter where they take the boat.
Giving meaning to one’s life might end in madness,
But a life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It’s a boat yearning for the sea yet too afraid.

It never crossed my mind
Until I was on the verge of dying
That Jenny loved me to death, with a spiteful heart.
I was seventy, and she was thirty-five,
And I exhausted myself trying to support
Jenny, vibrant Jenny, full of life’s excitement.
Despite all my wisdom and intellect,
I brought her no joy at all, honestly,
Yet time and again she talked about the remarkable strength
Of Willard Shafer and his incredible act
Of lifting a tractor out of a ditch
One time at Georgie Kirby’s.
So Jenny got my fortune and married Willard—
That muscle-bound guy! That foolish soul!

The barrel maker should understand barrels.
But I also learned about life,
And you who hang around these graves
Think you know life.
You probably believe your gaze covers a wide horizon,
But in reality, you’re just looking around inside your barrel.
You can’t lift yourself to the top
And see the outside world,
While also seeing yourself.
You’re stuck in the barrel of your own making—
Taboos, rules, and appearances,
Are the slats of your barrel.
Break them and break the spell
Of thinking your barrel is life
And that you truly understand life.

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 believed
With eyes bright from faith in God,
Brought about the world’s great reforms?
Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic
Would have been heard if the enslaved had crowned the dominant dollar,
Despite Whitney’s cotton gin,
And steam and rolling mills and iron
And telegraphs and white free labor?
Do you think Daisy Fraser
Would have been pushed out and driven away
If the canning factory had never needed
Her little house and lot?
Or do you think the poker room
Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar
Would have been closed if the money lost
And spent on beer hadn’t been redirected,
By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes
For bigger sales of shoes and blankets,
And children’s cloaks and oak cradles?
Honestly, a moral truth is a hollow tooth
That needs to be propped up with gold.

If you in the village think my work was good,
Closing the bars and putting a stop to card games,
And bringing old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
In many efforts to cleanse the community of sin;
Why do you allow the milliner’s daughter Dora,
And the useless son of Benjamin Pantier
To use my grave as their inappropriate pillow every night?

I spent my money trying to get you elected as Mayor
A. D. Blood.
I showered you with admiration,
To me, you were the almost perfect man.
You consumed my personality,
And the idealism of my youth,
And the strength of my loyalty.
All my hopes for the world,
And all my beliefs in Truth,
Were melted down in the intense heat
Of my devotion to you,
And shaped into your image.
Then, when I discovered who you really were:
That your soul was small
And your words were as false
As your blue-white porcelain teeth,
And your celluloid cuffs,
I resented the love I had for you,
I hated myself, and I hated you
For my wasted soul and wasted youth.
And I tell everyone, beware of ideals,
Beware of giving your love away
To any man alive.

When Reuben Pantier ran away and left me,
I went to Springfield. There, I met a rich guy,
Whose father had just died and left him a fortune.
He married me while drunk.
My life was miserable.
A year later, one day they found him dead.
That made me wealthy. I moved to Chicago.
After a while, I met Tyler Rountree, a real jerk.
I moved on to New York. A gray-haired businessman
Got infatuated with me—so, another fortune.
He died one night right in my arms, you know.
(I saw his purple face for years afterward.)
There was almost a scandal.
I moved again, this time to Paris. I was now a woman,
Cunning, subtle, worldly-wise, and rich.
My nice apartment near the Champs Elysees
Became a hub for all sorts of people,
Musicians, poets, dandy types, artists, nobles,
Where we spoke French, German, Italian, and English.
I married Count Navigato, from Genoa.
We went to Rome. I think he poisoned me.
Now, in the Campo Santo overlooking
The sea where young Columbus dreamed of new worlds,
Look at what they carved: “Contessa Navigato
Implora eterna quiete.”

I was the hat maker
Talked about, lied about,
Mother of Dora,
Whose strange disappearance
Was blamed on how she was raised.
My eye keen for beauty
Saw much more than ribbons
And buckles and feathers
And straw hats and felt hats,
To highlight sweet faces,
And dark hair and gold.
One thing I will tell you
And one I will ask:
The ones who steal husbands
Wear makeup and accessories,
And trendy hats.
Wives, wear them yourselves.
Hats can cause divorces—
They can also prevent them.
Now, let me ask you:
If all the children born here in Spoon River
Had been raised by the
County, somewhere on a farm;
And if their mothers and fathers had been free
To live and enjoy, to change partners if they wanted,
Do you think Spoon River
Would have been any worse off?

There’s something about death
Just like love itself!
If with someone you’ve shared passion with
And the warmth of youthful love,
You too, after years of living
Together, feel the flame die down
And slowly fade away together,
Gradually, softly, gently,
As if in each other’s arms,
Leaving the familiar room—
That’s a bond between souls
Just like love itself!

Take note, passers-by, of the deep eroding
Carved into my gravestone by the wind and rain—
As if some invisible force or hatred
Was keeping score against me,
But to destroy, not to preserve, my memory.
I was a Circuit Judge in life, a maker of notches,
Deciding cases based on the points the lawyers scored,
Not on the rightness of the matter.
O wind and rain, leave my gravestone alone
For worse than the anger of the wronged,
The curses of the poor,
Was to lie silent, yet with clear vision,
Realizing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,
Executed by my sentence,
Was innocent in spirit compared to me.

I had messed around all day at the county fair.
But on the drive home with “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire,
Who were both pretty drunk, I had to keep playing
To the tune of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses
Until they took off. Blind as I was, I tried to jump out
When the carriage went into the ditch,
And I got caught in the wheels and died.
There’s a blind man here with a forehead
As big and white as a cloud.
And all of us fiddlers, from the highest to the lowest,
Composers and storytellers
Sit at his feet,
And listen to him sing about the fall of Troy.

I won the prize for my essay at school
Here in the village,
And published a novel before I turned twenty-five.
I went to the city for inspiration and to develop my craft;
There I married the banker’s daughter,
And eventually became the bank's president—
Always hoping for some free time
To write an epic novel about the war.
In the meantime, I was friends with the influential, and passionate about literature,
Hosting Matthew Arnold and Emerson.
I spoke after dinner, writing essays
For local clubs. Finally brought back here—
My childhood home, you know—
Not even a small plaque in Chicago
To keep my name remembered.
How amazing it is to write the simple line:
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!“

Well, don’t you see this is how it went:
We bought the farm with what he inherited,
And his brothers and sisters claimed he poisoned
His father's mind against them.
And we never found peace with our fortune.
The disease wiped out the cattle, and the crops failed.
Then lightning struck the granary.
So we mortgaged the farm to keep things going.
And he grew quiet and worried all the time.
Then some neighbors stopped talking to us,
And sided with his brothers and sisters.
And I had nowhere to turn, as one might say to oneself,
At an earlier stage in life;
“No big deal, So-and-so is my friend, or I can shake this off
With a little trip to Decatur.”
Then the worst smells filled the rooms.
So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house
Went up in a blaze,
As I danced in the yard with waving arms,
While he cried like a freezing steer.

The fall my sister Nancy Knapp
Set our house on fire
While they were trying Dr. Duval
For the murder of Zora Clemens,
And I sat in the courtroom for two weeks
Listening to every witness.
It was obvious he had gotten her pregnant;
And letting the baby be born
Wouldn't be acceptable.
Well, what about me with eight kids,
And one on the way, and the farm
Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?
And when I got home that night,
(After hearing the story about the buggy ride,
And finding Zora in the ditch,)
The first thing I noticed, right by the steps,
Where the boys had dug for angle worms,
Was the hatchet!
And just as I walked in, there was my wife,
Standing in front of me, pregnant.
She started talking about the mortgaged farm,
And I killed her.

I, the one who wields punishment, the disruptor of balance,
Striker with whips and swords;
I, the one who despises lawbreakers;
I, strict and unforgiving,
Pushed the jury to sentence the madman, Barry Holden,
Was left feeling dead by a light too bright for my eyes,
And awoke to face a Truth with a bloodied brow:
Steel forceps awkwardly handled by a doctor
Against my son's head as he entered this world
Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science
To take care of him.
That’s how the world of those with troubled minds
Became my life's work, my entire universe.
Poor damaged boy! In the end, you were the potter
And I, along with all my acts of kindness,
The vessels shaped by your hands.

They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
Since there’s no law against blasphemy.
Later, they locked me up as insane
Where a Catholic guard beat me to death.
My crime was this:
I said God lied to Adam and made him
Live the life of a fool,
Unaware that there’s evil in the world alongside good.
And when Adam outsmarted God by eating the apple
And saw through the lie,
God kicked him out of Eden to stop him from taking
The fruit of eternal life.
For Christ’s sake, you sensible people,
Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:
“And the Lord God said, behold the man
Has become like one of us” (a hint of envy, you see),
“To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed):
“And now lest he put forth his hand and take
Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:
Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden.” (The
reason I believe God crucified His Own Son
To escape the messy situation is that it sounds just like Him.)

I couldn't run or play
As a kid.
As an adult, I could only sip from the cup,
Not drink—Because scarlet fever left my heart damaged.
Yet I lie here
Comforted by a secret that only Mary knows:
There’s a garden of acacia,
Catalpa trees, and arbors filled with sweet vines—
There on that June afternoon
Next to Mary—
Kissing her with my soul on my lips
It suddenly took off.

If I could have lived another year
I could have completed my flying machine,
And become rich and famous.
So it makes sense that the craftsman
Who tried to carve a dove for me
Ended up making it look more like a chicken.
Because what is it all but being born,
And running around the yard,
Until the day of the chopping block?
Except that a man has an angel’s mind,
And recognizes the axe from the start!

I was the lawyer for the “Q”
And the Indemnity Company that insured
The mine's owners.
I pulled the strings with the judge and jury,
And the higher courts, to defeat the claims
Of the injured, the widow, and the orphan,
And I made a fortune from it.
The bar association praised me
In an extravagant resolution.
And there were many floral tributes—
But the rats consumed my heart
And a snake built a nest in my head.

I was born in Weimar
To a French mother
And a German father, a very learned professor.
Orphaned at fourteen,
I became a dancer known as Russian Sonia,
Up and down the boulevards of Paris,
Occasionally the mistress of various dukes and counts,
And later of struggling artists and poets.
At forty, feeling past my prime, I set out for New York
And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat,
Red-faced and healthy, even though he was turning sixty,
Returning after having sold a shipload
Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg.
He brought me to Spoon River, and we lived here
For twenty years—they thought we were married.
This oak tree near me is the favorite spot
For chattering blue jays all day long.
And why not? Because even my dust is laughing
At the amusing thing called life.

Doc Meyers said I had hypersexuality,
And Doc Hill called it leukemia—
But I know what brought me here:
I was sixty-four but as strong as a man
In his thirties or forties.
And it wasn’t writing a letter every day,
And it wasn’t late nights seven days a week,
And it wasn’t the stress of thinking about Minnie,
And it wasn’t fear or jealous worry,
Or the never-ending task of trying to understand
Her incredible mind, or sympathy
For the tough life she lived
With her first and second husbands—
It was none of these that brought me down—
But the noise of daughters and threats from sons,
And the insults and curses from all my relatives
Right up to the day I snuck to Peoria
And married Minnie despite them—
And why do you question why my will was made
For the best and purest of women?

If the train to Peoria
had derailed, I might have gotten away with my life—
I definitely would have left this place.
But since it was also burned, they confused me
for John Allen, who was taken to the Hebrew Cemetery
in Chicago,
and John for me, so here I am.
It was bad enough running a clothing store in this town,
but to be buried here—ugh!

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like tiny bugs in a fight—
Soft rhythms that the strong breeze stirs—
But the pine tree creates a symphony from it.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the bunch with the same old idea:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are gone;
And what is love but a rose that withers?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, bravery and truth,
Courage, loyalty, heroism, defeat—
All in the weaving, and oh what designs!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Unaware of it all my whole life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little rhythms,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife
And almost a year to regain my strength,
Till the dawn of our tenth wedding anniversary
Brought me back to myself again.
We walked through the forest together,
On a path of soft moss and grass.
But I couldn’t look into your eyes,
And you couldn’t look into mine,
For such sorrow was ours—the first signs of gray in your hair.
And I was just a shell of who I once was.
And what did we talk about?—the sky and the water,
Anything, almost, to avoid our true feelings.
Then your gift of wild roses,
Set on the table to brighten our dinner.
Poor heart, how bravely you tried
To imagine and relive a moment of joy!
Then my spirit sank as night fell,
And you left me alone in my room for a while,
Just like you did when I was a bride, poor heart.
And I looked in the mirror and something said:
“One should be fully alive when one is half-alive—”
Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.”
And I realized that looking there in the mirror—
Dear, have you ever understood?

Reverend Wiley told me not to divorce him
For the sake of the kids,
And Judge Somers gave him the same advice.
So we stuck it out until the end.
But two of the kids sided with him,
And two of the kids sided with me.
The two who supported him blamed me,
And the two who supported me blamed him,
And they mourned for the one they supported.
And everyone was torn by the guilt of judging,
And felt tormented because they couldn't admire
Both him and me equally.
Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars
Or under stones are twisted, yellow, and weak.
And no mother would let her baby drink
Contaminated milk from her breast.
Yet preachers and judges advise raising souls
Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight,
No warmth, but only dampness and cold—
Preachers and judges!

To this generation, I would say:
Memorize a little piece of verse that speaks truth or beauty.
It might come in handy in your life.
My husband had nothing to do
With the bank's collapse—he was just the cashier.
The disaster was caused by the president, Thomas Rhodes,
And his arrogant, unscrupulous son.
Yet my husband was thrown in prison,
And I was left to care for the kids,
To feed, clothe, and educate them.
And I did it, sending them out
Into the world all clean and strong,
Thanks to the wisdom of Pope, the poet:
“Act well your part, there all the honor lies.”

I delivered four thousand sermons,
I led forty revivals,
And baptized many converts.
Yet no action of mine
Resonates more in the memory of the world,
And none is cherished more by me:
See how I saved the Blisses from divorce,
And spared the children from that shame,
So they could grow up to be good people,
Happy themselves, a pride for the village.

This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff swallow Made her nest in a hole in the high clay bank There near Miller’s Ford. But no sooner were the young hatched Than a snake crawled up to the nest To devour the chicks. Then the mother swallow, with quick flapping And sharp cries Fought the snake, Blinding him with the flurry of her wings, Until he, wriggling and lifting his head, Fell backward down the bank Into Spoon River and drowned. Hardly an hour passed Until a shrike Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. As for me, I overcame my lower nature Only to be destroyed by my brother’s ambition.

I had no issue at all
With selling my belongings at auction
In the village square.
It gave my cherished flock the opportunity
To own something that had belonged to me
As a keepsake.
But that trunk that was sold
To Burchard, the tavern owner!
Did you know it had the manuscripts
Of a lifetime of sermons?
And he tossed them out as trash.

My brave struggle! I call it brave,
With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:
Hating slavery, but still waging war.
I, full of spirit, boldness, courage
Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
With its powerful influences drawn from
New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
Hating me yet fearing my strength.
With a wife and kids weighing me down—
Yet they are the very joys of my life.
Finding small pleasures that cost me my reputation,
And facing consequences I didn’t cause;
Against the church with its dampness of death,
In favor of the human warmth of the tavern;
Tangled with fates that felt foreign to me,
Abandoned by the hands I thought were mine.
Then just as I felt my immense strength
Waning, I saw my children
Had intertwined their lives in unfamiliar places—
And I stood alone, just as I started alone
My brave life! I died on my feet,
Facing the silence—facing the reality
That no one would know of the struggle I fought.

Imagine you were just five feet two,
And had worked your way up as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candlelight
Until you became a lawyer?
Then suppose through your hard work,
And regular church attendance,
You became the attorney for Thomas Rhodes,
Collecting notes and mortgages,
And representing all the widows
In the Probate Court? And throughout it all,
They mocked your height, laughed at your clothes,
And your polished boots? Then suppose
You were appointed County Judge?
And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,
And Harmon Whitney, and all the big shots
Who had looked down on you, had to stand
Before the court and say “Your Honor”—
Well, don’t you think it was only natural
That I made it tough for them?

Jonas Keene thought he had it tough
Because all his kids were failures.
But I know a fate that's even worse:
It's being a failure while your kids succeed.
I raised a bunch of eagles
Who eventually flew away, leaving me
A crow on an empty branch.
Then, wanting to add "Honorable" to my name,
And hoping to win my kids' admiration,
I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
Spending my savings to win—and lost.
That fall, my daughter won first prize in Paris
For her painting, titled, “The Old Mill”—
(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin installed steam.)
The realization that I wasn't worthy of her crushed me.

Why did Albert Schirding take his own life?
He was trying to be the County Superintendent of Schools,
Blessed as he was with the resources for life
And amazing kids, who brought him pride
Before he turned sixty?
If even one of my sons could have run a newsstand,
Or one of my daughters could have married a good man,
I wouldn’t have walked in the rain
And climbed into bed with my clothes all wet,
Turning down medical help.

Have any of you, passers-by,
Had an old tooth that was an endless pain?
Or a side ache that never really went away?
Or a nasty growth that continued to develop?
So that even in the deepest sleep
There was a shadowy awareness or a nagging thought
About the tooth, the ache, the growth?
Even so, unrequited love, or failed dreams,
Or a mistake in life that tangled your existence
Hopelessly to the end,
Will, like a toothache or a side pain,
Haunt your dreams in the final sleep
Until perfect freedom from this world
Comes to you like someone waking up
Healed and happy in the morning!

They got me into Sunday school
In Spoon River
And tried to get me to choose Jesus over Confucius.
I wouldn't have been any worse off
If I had tried to get them to choose Confucius over Jesus.
Because, out of nowhere, like it was a joke,
Harry Wiley,
The minister’s son, smashed my ribs into my lungs,
With a punch.
Now I’ll never rest with my ancestors in Pekin,
And no kids will worship at my grave.

Wealthy and respected by my fellow citizens,
The father of many children, born to a noble mother,
All raised here
In the big house at the edge of town.
Check out the cedar tree in the yard!
I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all the girls to Rockford,
While my life continued, bringing me more wealth and honors—
Resting under my cedar tree in the evenings.
The years passed.
I sent the girls to Europe;
I provided dowries when they married.
I gave the boys money to start their businesses.
They were strong kids, as promising as apples
Before the bites start to show.
But John fled the country in shame.
Jenny died in childbirth—
I sat under my cedar tree.
Harry took his own life after a binge,
Susan went through a divorce—
I sat under my cedar tree.
Paul was worn out from over-studying,
Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man—
I sat under my cedar tree.
All were gone, or broken in some way or consumed by life—
I sat under my cedar tree.
My partner, their mother, was taken—
I sat under my cedar tree,
Until the toll of ninety years was reached.
Oh, earthly mother, who rocks the fallen leaf to rest.

Dear Jane! dear beautiful Jane!
How you quietly came into the room (where I lay so sick)
In your nurse’s cap and white cuffs,
And took my hand and said with a smile:
“You're not that sick—you’ll be better soon.”
And how the soft gaze of your eyes
Sank into mine like dew that falls
Into the heart of a flower.
Dear Jane! the entire McNeely fortune
Couldn't have paid for the care you gave me,
Day and night, and night and day;
Nor for your smile, nor the warmth of your spirit,
In your little hands resting on my forehead.
Jane, until the flame of life flickered out
In the dark above the blanket of night
I longed and hoped to be well again
So I could rest my head on your little chest,
And hold you tightly in a embrace of love—
Did my father make arrangements for you when he passed,
Jane, dear Jane?

Passer-by,
To love is to discover your own soul
Through the soul of the person you love.
When that person pulls away from your soul,
Then you have lost a part of yourself.
It’s been said: “I have a friend,
But my sadness has no one to share it with.”
That’s why I spent so many years in solitude at my father’s house,
Trying to find myself again,
And to transform my sorrow into something greater.
But there was my father with his own sorrow,
Sitting under the cedar tree,
An image that eventually settled into my heart,
Bringing endless peace.
Oh, you souls who have made life
Scented and pure as white roses
From the earth's dark soil,
Eternal peace!

When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
I planned to come back for you, I really did.
But Laura, my landlady’s daughter,
Somehow slipped into my life and swept me away.
Then after a few years, who do I bump into
But Georgine Miner from Niles—a product
Of the free love, Fourierist scenes that thrived
Before the war all over Ohio.
Her artsy boyfriend had grown bored with her,
And she turned to me for strength and comfort.
She was this kind of crying thing
You hold in your arms, and suddenly
It slimes your face with its running nose,
And spews its essence all over you;
Then bites your hand and leaps away.
And there you are, standing there bleeding and smelling to high heaven
Why, Mary McNeely, I wasn't worthy
To kiss the hem of your robe!

A stepmother kicked me out of the house, leaving me bitter.
A guy who was all about leisure and noncommittal took away my innocence.
For years, I was his secret mistress—no one knew.
I learned his sneaky tactics
And moved through life like a flea on a dog.
All that time, I was just “very private,” seeing different guys.
Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.
His sister called me his mistress;
And Daniel wrote to me:
“Shameful word, tainting our beautiful love!”
But my anger simmered, ready to strike.
My Lesbian friend soon got involved.
She hated Daniel’s sister.
And Daniel couldn't stand her short husband.
She saw an opportunity to stab back:
I needed to tell Daniel’s wife about his pursuit!
But before I did that, I begged him to run away to London with me.
“Why not just stay in the city like we have?” he asked.
Then I turned sneaky and got back at his rejection
In the arms of my casual friend.
Then I resurfaced, holding the letter Daniel wrote me
To prove my honor was intact, showing it to his wife,
My Lesbian friend, and everyone.
If only Daniel had shot me dead!
Instead of stripping me bare of lies,
A harlot in body and soul.

Sure, you liberals,
And explorers in the world of ideas,
You adventurers through imaginative heights,
Tossed around by unpredictable currents, falling into turbulence,
You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,
And Tennessee Claflin Shopes—
You found, despite all your claimed wisdom,
How difficult it ultimately is
To keep the soul from breaking into tiny pieces.
While we, seekers of life's treasures,
Gatherers and savers of wealth,
Are whole, unified, balanced,
Right to the end.

After I attended lectures
At our Chautauqua and studied French
For twenty years, nearly memorizing the grammar,
I thought I’d take a trip to Paris
To give my culture a final polish.
So I went to Peoria to get a passport—
(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.)
And there, the clerk of the district court
Made me swear to support and defend
The Constitution—yes, even me—
Who couldn’t defend or support it at all!
And guess what? That very morning,
The Federal Judge, in the very next room
To where I took the oath,
Decided the Constitution
Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes
For the water works of Spoon River!

I lost my support in Spoon River
From trying to focus my mind on the camera
To capture the essence of the person.
The best photo I ever took
Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.
He sat up straight and made me wait
Until he fixed his cross-eye.
Then when he was ready he said “all right.”
And I shouted “overruled” and his eye turned up.
And I caught him just as he used to look
When saying “I object.”

While I was dealing with Dom Pedro
I got to the point that splits the crowd between people who are
For singing “Turkey in the Straw” or
“There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”—
(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord).
For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the Holy Land;
For dancing, or passing the plate;
For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;
For men, or for money;
For the people or against them.
This was the situation: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,
Led by Ben Pantier’s wife,
Went to the Village trustees,
And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro
From the barn of Wash McNeely, right at the edge of town,
To a barn outside the city limits,
Claiming it corrupted public morals.
Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day—
They thought it was an insult to colts.

I became spiritually bloated by feeding off the souls of others.
Whenever I encountered a strong soul,
I would hurt its pride and drain its strength.
The places of friendship were familiar with my trickery,
Because wherever I could take a friend, I did.
And wherever I could increase my power
By sabotaging others' ambitions, I did,
Just to smooth my own path.
And defeating other souls,
Simply to showcase and prove my superior strength,
Was a joy for me,
The thrilling rush of soul workouts.
By consuming souls, I should have lived forever.
But their undigested remnants caused me a deadly disease,
Filled with fear, restlessness, despair,
Hatred, suspicion, and disturbed visions.
I finally collapsed with a scream.
Remember the acorn;
It doesn’t consume other acorns.

I was a peasant girl from Germany,
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy, and strong.
The first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.
On a summer day when she was away,
He sneaked into the kitchen and took me
Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
I turned my head. Then neither of us
Seemed to know what happened.
And I cried for what would become of me.
I cried and cried as my secret began to show.
One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
And wouldn’t make any trouble for me,
And, being childless, would adopt it.
(He had given her a farm to keep quiet.)
So she stayed hidden in the house and spread rumors,
As if it were going to happen to her.
Everything went well and the child was born—
They were so kind to me.
Later I married Gus Wertman, and years went by.
But—at political rallies when onlookers thought I was crying
At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene—
That wasn’t it. No! I wanted to shout:
That’s my son!
That’s my son.

I was the only child of Frances Harris from Virginia
and Thomas Greene from Kentucky,
both from brave and noble lineages.
I owe everything I became to them,
a judge, a member of Congress, a leader in the State.
From my mother, I got
energy, creativity, and eloquence;
from my father, strength, reasoning, and logic.
All credit goes to them
for the service I provided to the people!

My mind was a mirror:
It saw what it saw, it understood what it understood.
In my youth, my mind was just a mirror
In a speeding car,
That caught and lost pieces of the landscape.
Then over time
Deep scratches appeared on the mirror,
Allowing the outside world to seep in,
And letting my inner self look out.
For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,
A birth marked by both gains and losses.
The mind views the world as something separate,
And the soul brings the world together with itself.
A scratched mirror reflects no image—
And this is the silence of wisdom.

Oh, how many times did Ernest Hyde and I
Argue about free will.
My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow
tethered to graze, and free, you know, only as far
as the length of the rope.
One day while we were arguing, watching the cow
pull at the rope to try to get beyond the circle
that she’d eaten bare,
the stake came out, and tossing her head,
she ran toward us.
“What’s that, free will or what?” said Ernest, running.
I fell just as she gored me to my death.

Not character, not strength, not patience
Did I possess, despite what the village thought I had
In putting up with my wife while preaching on,
Doing the work God assigned to me.
I detested her like a shrew, like a loose woman.
I was aware of all her affairs.
But still, if I divorced her,
I would have to give up the ministry.
So to do God’s work and keep it going,
I put up with her.
So I lied to myself.
So I lied to Spoon River!
Yet I attempted lecturing, ran for the legislature,
Campaigning for books, with one thought in mind:
If I make money this way,
I will divorce her.

The secret of the stars—gravity.
The secret of the earth—rock layers.
The secret of the soil—to take in seeds.
The secret of the seed—the embryo.
The secret of man—the planter.
The secret of woman—the earth.
My secret: Buried under a mound you will never discover.

I was stuck between Altgeld and Armour.
I lost a lot of friends, time, and money
Fighting for Altgeld, whom Editor Whedon
Called the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.
Then Armour started shipping dressed meat to Spoon River,
Forcing me to close my slaughterhouse,
And my butcher shop fell apart.
The new powers of Altgeld and Armour hit me
At the same time. I thought I deserved to recoup the money I lost
And to regain the friends who abandoned me,
So I expected the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner.
Instead, he appointed Whedon from the Spoon River Argus,
So I ran for the legislature and got elected.
I said forget principles and sold my vote
On Charles T. Yerkes’ streetcar franchise.
Of course, I was one of the guys they caught.
Who was it, Armour, Altgeld, or me
That ruined my life?

A chaplain in the army,
A chaplain in the prisons,
An encourager in Spoon River,
Intoxicated by divinity, Spoon River—
Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,
And myself to scorn and misery.
But why can't you see that the love of women,
And even a love for wine,
Are what motivate the soul, craving divinity,
To reach the ecstatic vision
And glimpse the heavenly frontiers?
Only after many tests of strength,
Only when all other inspirations fail,
Does the aspiring soul
By its own determination
Discover the divine
By relying on itself.

Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
In a forgotten spot near the fence
Where the thickets from Siever’s woods
Have crept over, growing thinly.
And you, you’re a leader in New York,
The wife of a well-known millionaire,
A name in the society pages,
Beautiful, admired, maybe even
Enhanced by the illusion of distance.
You’ve succeeded, I’ve failed
In the eyes of the world.
You’re alive, I’m dead.
Yet I know that I conquered your spirit;
And I know that lying here far from you,
Unnoticed among your prominent friends
In the dazzling world where you thrive,
I am truly the unstoppable force in your life
That denies it complete success.

As for democracy, fellow citizens,
Aren't you ready to admit
That I, who was born into wealth and privilege,
Was unmatched in Spoon River
In my commitment to the cause of Liberty?
While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
Born in a rundown shack and starting out
As a water carrier for the section workers,
Then becoming a section worker himself,
Later foreman of the crew, until he advanced
To the position of superintendent of the railroad,
Living in Chicago,
Was truly a ruthless boss,
Exploiting the hardworking people,
And a fierce opponent of democracy.
So I say to you, Spoon River,
And to you, O republic,
Beware of the man who rises to power
From a single suspender.

Both for the nation and for the individual,
And for a nation as well as a person,
It’s better to be feared than loved.
And if this nation would rather give up
The friendship of every country
Than give up its wealth,
I say for a person it’s worse to lose
Money than friends.
And I tear down the curtain that hides the soul
Of an ancient desire:
When the people shout for freedom
They really want power over the strong.
I, Anthony Findlay, rising to greatness
From a humble water carrier,
Until I could say to thousands “Come,”
And say to thousands “Go,”
Affirm that a nation can never be good.
Or achieve the good,
Where the strong and the wise don’t have the authority
To guide the dull and weak.

Neither bitterness, fellow citizens,
Nor forgetting the aimlessness.
And the chaos and waste
Under democracy’s reign in Spoon River
Made me abandon the party of law and order
And lead the liberal party.
Fellow citizens! I saw clearly
That every man of the millions of men
Who commits to Freedom,
And falters as Freedom falters,
Enduring waste and chaos,
And the rule of the weak and blind,
Dies hoping to build a world,
Like the coral insect, for the temple
To stand on in the end.
And I swear that Freedom will fight to the finish
The battle for making every soul
Wise and strong and fit to rule
Like Plato’s noble guardians
In a global republic united!

You hopeful ones, listen to the story of the unknown
Who lies here with no stone to mark the spot.
As a reckless and wild boy,
Wandering with a gun in hand through the forest
Near Aaron Hatfield's mansion,
I shot a hawk perched at the top
Of a dead tree. He fell with a guttural cry
At my feet, his wing broken.
Then I put him in a cage
Where he lived many days, cawing angrily at me
Whenever I offered him food.
Every day I search the realms of Hades
For the soul of the hawk,
So I can offer him the friendship
Of one whom life wounded and caged.

In my youth, I had strong and tireless wings,
But I didn't know the mountains.
In my old age, I knew the mountains
But my tired wings couldn't keep up with my vision—
Genius is wisdom and youth.

After you’ve filled your soul
To the highest point,
With books, ideas, suffering,
And an understanding of many personalities,
The ability to read glances, silences,
The pauses during significant changes,
The talent for insight and foresight;
So that you feel at times you can hold the world
In the palm of your hand;
Then, if the weight of so many powers
Condenses in your soul,
Your soul ignites,
And in the blaze of your soul
The world's darkness is illuminated and made clear—
Be grateful if in that moment of ultimate clarity
Life doesn’t play tricks.

I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for the whole village.
And I still feel sorry for you at the loom of life,
You who are singing to the shuttle
And carefully watching the work of your hands,
If you ever face the day of hate, of harsh truth.
Because the fabric of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden beneath the loom—
A pattern you never see!
And you weave with a brave heart, singing, singing,
You protect the threads of love and friendship
For noble designs in gold and purple.
And long after others can see
You have crafted a moon-white strip of cloth,
You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it
With images of love and beauty.
The loom stops short!
The pattern’s done
You’re alone in the room!
You have woven a shroud
And hatred of it lays you in it.

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was destroyed,
And I was tarred and feathered,
For publishing this on the day the
Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
Huge crowds passed in front of her,
Lifting their faces to her desperately.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was swinging the sword,
Sometimes hitting a child, then a laborer,
Again a sneaky woman, again a madman.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
By those who avoided the blows of the sword.
A man in a black robe read from a manuscript:
“She is no respecter of persons.”
Then a young man wearing a red cap
Jumped to her side and took away the bandage.
And behold, the lashes had been eaten away
From the oozy eyelids;
The eyeballs were burned with a milky mucus;
The madness of a dying soul
Was written on her face—
But the crowd understood why she wore the bandage.”

To see every angle of every issue;
To be on all sides, to be everything, to be nothing for long;
To twist the truth, to manipulate it for a reason,
To exploit the deep feelings and passions of humanity
For selfish motives, for clever intentions,
To wear a mask like the actors of ancient Greece—
Your eight-page paper—behind which you hide,
Shouting through the loudspeaker of big type:
“This is me, the giant.”
In doing so, you also live like a sneak-thief,
Corrupted by the anonymous words
Of your secretive soul.
To cover up scandals for cash,
And bring them back to the surface for revenge,
Or to sell newspapers,
Destroying reputations, or lives if necessary,
To win at any price, except your own life.
To revel in wicked power, abandoning civilization,
Like a paranoid kid who puts a log on the tracks
And derails the express train.
To be an editor, as I once was.
Then to lie here near the river over the spot
Where the sewage flows from the village,
And where empty cans and garbage are dumped,
And where unwanted pregnancies are hidden.

Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and checkered fabric,
Flour and bacon, overalls, clothes, all day long
For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days
For more than twenty years.
Saying “Yes ma’am” and “Yes sir,” and “Thank you”
A thousand times a day, all for fifty dollars a month.
Living in this filthy room in the rundown “Commercial.”
And forced to go to Sunday School, and listen
To Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year
For more than an hour each time,
Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church
As well as the store and the bank.
So while I was tying my necktie that morning
I suddenly saw myself in the mirror:
My hair all gray, my face like a soggy pie.
So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing
You cowardly dog! You worthless pauper!
You Rhodes’ slave! Till Roger Baughman
Thought I was fighting with someone,
And looked through the transom just in time
To see me collapse on the floor in a heap
From a broken vein in my head.

The sudden death of Eugene Carman
put me next in line for a promotion to fifty dollars a month,
and I told my wife and kids that night.
But it didn’t happen, and I started to think
Old Rhodes thought I was stealing
the blankets I took and sold on the side
to pay for a doctor’s bill for my little girl.
Then, like a lightning strike, old Rhodes accused me,
and promised to go easy on me for my family’s sake
if I confessed, so I confessed,
and begged him to keep it out of the papers,
and I asked the editors, too.
That night at home, the constable came for me
and every paper, except the Clarion,
painted me as a thief
because old Rhodes was an advertiser
and wanted to make an example of me.
Oh! You know how the kids cried,
and how my wife felt both pity and hatred for me,
and how I ended up lying here.

Vegetarian, open-minded, free-thinking, and a Christian in ethics;
A speaker skilled in the flashy style of Ingersoll.
Meat-eating, vengeful, believer, and pagan.
Controlled, open to experiences, unpredictable, deceitful, vain,
Proud, with a pride that turns struggle into a joke;
With a heart eaten away by the worm of theatrical despair.
Wearing a facade of indifference to cover the shame of failure;
I, child of the abolitionist dream—
A kind of Brand born of contradictions.
What else could happen when I defended
The patriotic troublemakers who burned the courthouse
So Spoon River could have a new one
Instead of admitting their guilt?
When Kinsey Keene pierced
The cardboard mask of my life with a ray of light,
What could I do but retreat, like the beast within me
That I raised from a whelp, to a corner to growl?
The pyramid of my life was nothing but a dune,
Barren and shapeless, ultimately ruined by the storm.

Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard
For buying an engine so powerful
That it destroyed itself and wrecked the grinder
He was using.
But here’s a joke of cosmic proportions:
The drive of nature that allowed a man
To develop a spiritual life—
Oh, what a miracle of the world!—
With the same brain that the ape and wolf
Use to find food, build shelter, and reproduce.
Nature has made man capable of this,
In a world where she gives him nothing to do
After all—(despite his soul's strength being spent
In a pointless waste of energy.
To align itself with the machines of the gods)—
But find food, build shelter, and reproduce!

All they said was true:
I ruined my dad’s finances with my loans
To mess around with wheat; but this was true—
I was buying wheat for him too,
Who couldn’t take the chance in his name
Because of his church ties.
And while George Reece was serving his sentence
I chased the fleeting allure of women
And the mockery of wine in New York.
It’s terrible to grow tired of wine and women
When nothing else is left in life.
But imagine your hair is gray, and bowed
Over a table filled with bitter stubs
Of cigarettes and empty glasses,
And there’s a knock, and you know it’s the knock
That’s been drowned out for so long by popping corks
And the loud calls of women of leisure—
And you look up, and there’s your Fate,
Who waited until your hair was gray,
And your heart was racing to tell you:
The game is over. I’ve come for you,
Go out on Broadway and get hit by a car,
They’ll ship you back to Spoon River.

It was just like everything else in life:
Something outside of me pulled me down,
My own strength never let me down.
There was a time I made enough money
To go away to school,
But then my father suddenly needed help
And I had to give him all of it.
That’s how it went until I ended up
Being a jack-of-all-trades in Spoon River.
So when I finished cleaning the water tower,
And they lifted me up seventy feet,
I unhooked the rope from my waist,
And jokingly threw my big arms
Over the smooth steel edge of the top of the tower—
But they slipped on the slick grime,
And down, down, down, I fell
Through the roaring darkness!

I was sick, but more than that, I was furious
At the corrupt police and the unfair game of life.
So I wrote to the Chief of Police in Peoria:
“I’m here in my childhood home in Spoon River,
Slowly fading away.
But come and get me, I killed the son
Of the wealthy merchant, in Madam Lou’s.
And the news reports that claimed he shot himself
In his home while cleaning a hunting rifle—
Are lies, spun to cover up the scandal
For the sake of advertising dollars.
In my room at Madam Lou’s, I shot him,
Because he knocked me down when I said
That, despite all his money,
I was going to see my lover that night.”

I stumbled on through the darkness,
The sky was hazy with a few stars,
Which I tried to follow as best I could.
It was nine o’clock, and I was trying to get home.
But somehow I was lost,
Even though I was still on the road.
Then I staggered through a gate and into a yard,
And shouted at the top of my lungs:
“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!”
(I thought it was his house and he would help me find my way home.)
But who should come out but A. D. Blood,
In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,
And ranting about the damn bars,
And the criminals they produced?
“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said,
As I stood there swaying back and forth,
Taking the hits from the stick in his hand
Until I collapsed at his feet.

I was well-known and loved
And wealthy, as people measure wealth
In Spoon River, where I lived and worked.
That was home for me,
Even though all my kids had moved far away—
Which is the way of life—all but one.
The youngest boy stayed at home,
To help me in my old age
And comfort his mother.
But I grew weaker as he grew stronger,
And we started to argue about the business,
And his wife said I was holding him back;
He convinced his mother to see things his way,
Until they uprooted me to move
With them to her childhood home in Missouri.
And so, much of my fortune was gone in the end,
Even though I signed the will just as he wrote it,
He gained little from it.

She loved me.
Oh! how she loved me. I never had a chance to escape
From the day she first saw me.
But after we got married, I thought
She might show her human side and let me go,
Or maybe she'd divorce me. But few people die, and none just walk away.
So I ran away and was gone for a year just for fun.
But she never complained. She said everything would be fine
And that I would come back. And I did come back.
I told her that while rowing a boat,
I had been captured near Van Buren Street
By pirates on Lake Michigan,
And kept in chains, so I couldn't write to her.
She cried and kissed me, saying it was cruel,
Outrageous, inhuman! I then realized our marriage
Was a divine arrangement
And could only end
With death.
I was right.

He ran away and was gone for a year.
When he came home, he told me the ridiculous story
Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
And kept in chains so he couldn't write me.
I pretended to believe him, even though I knew very well
What he was up to, and that he met
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then
When she went to the city to buy supplies, as she claimed.
But a promise is a promise
And marriage is marriage,
And out of respect for my own character
I refused to get pulled into a divorce
By the scheme of a husband who had simply grown tired
Of his marital vow and duty.

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,
And he got six dollars a month as a pension,
He stood on the corner talking politics,
Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;
And I supported the family by doing laundry,
Learning all the secrets of the people
From their curtains, bedcovers, shirts, and skirts.
Because new things eventually get old,
They’re replaced with something better or not at all:
People are either thriving or struggling.
And rents and repairs grow with time;
No thread or needle can stop decay,
And some stains just won't come out,
And colors that bleed no matter what,
Yet you get blamed for ruining a dress.
Handkerchiefs and linens have their secrets—
The laundress, Life, knows all about it.
And I, who went to all the funerals
Held in Spoon River, swear I never
Saw a dead face without thinking it looked
Like something that had been washed and ironed.

Out of the lights and noise of cities,
Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,
Burned out from the fire of drinking, and broken,
The lover of a woman I took in self-hatred,
But to also hide a wounded pride as well.
To be judged and despised by a village of small minds—
I, blessed with language and wisdom,
Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,
A scavenger in the trash of grudges and wrongs,—
I, whom fortune smiled on!
I in a village,
Reciting to staring locals pages of poetry,
From the tales of golden years,
Or cracking a joke with a flash of crude humor
When they bought the drinks to spark my fading mind.
To be judged by you,
The essence of me hidden from you,
With its wound festering
By love for a wife who made the wound,
With her cold white breast, treasonous, pure, and hard,
Unyielding to the end, when the touch of her hand,
At any moment, might have cured me of the fever,
Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.
And only to think that my soul could not respond,
Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble,
But turned on itself like a tortured snake—judge me this way,
O world.

I shot my bird,
Even though it flew toward the setting sun;
But just as the shot went off, it soared
Up and up through the beams of golden light,
Until it flipped over, feathers ruffled,
With some of its down drifting nearby,
And dropped like a stone into the grass.
I walked around, pushing through the tangles,
Until I noticed a splash of blood on a stump,
And the quail lying close to the rotting roots.
I reached out my hand, but found no thorns,
Yet something pricked and stung and numbed it.
And then, in an instant, I spotted the rattler—
Its eyes wide and yellow,
Its head arched, sunk back in its coils,
A dirty ring, the color of ashes,
Or oak leaves faded under layers of leaves.
I stood still as a statue as it shrank and uncoiled
And started to crawl beneath the stump,
When I suddenly went limp in the grass.

I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
One, the house I built on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and slate roof.
The other, the lakefront in Chicago,
Where the railroad has a switching yard,
With whistling engines and crunching wheels,
And smoke and soot covering the city,
And the crash of cars along the boulevard,—
A stain like a pigpen on the harbor
Of a great city, dirty as a sty.
I helped to give this legacy
To future generations with my vote
In the House of Representatives,
And the appeal of it was to find peace
From the endless fear of need,
And to provide my daughters with a good upbringing,
And a sense of security in life.
But, you see, even though I had the mansion
And travel passes and local recognition,
I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers,
Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up
With a look as if someone was about to hit them;
And they married impulsively, chaotically,
Just to escape and have a change.
And what was the whole thing worth?
Well, it wasn’t worth anything!

I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage by the grist mill,
Raised in the big house up on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and slate roof.
My mom was so proud of the mansion
And proud of my dad’s success in life!
And my dad really loved us,
He looked after our happiness.
But I think the house was a curse,
Because my dad's fortune was small next to it;
And when my husband realized he married
A girl who was actually poor,
He mocked me about the spires,
Calling the house a scam to the world,
A deceptive lure for young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry that didn’t exist;
And a man, when selling his vote,
Should get enough from the people's betrayal
To support his whole family.
He troubled my life until I went back home
And lived like an old maid until I died,
Taking care of my dad.

My name used to be in the newspapers every day
For having eaten at some fancy place,
Or traveled to some exotic location,
Or rented a house in Paris,
Where I hosted the elite.
I was always eating or traveling,
Or going to the spa in Baden-Baden.
Now I'm here to pay tribute
To Spoon River, next to the family I came from.
No one cares now where I ate,
Or lived, or who I hosted,
Or how often I went to the spa in Baden-Baden.

Did my widow move around
From Mackinac to Los Angeles,
Taking breaks, relaxing, and sitting for an hour
Or more at the table over soup and meat
And fancy desserts and coffee?
I was taken down in my prime
From overwork and stress.
But I thought all along, no matter what happens
I’ve kept my insurance paid,
And there’s some money in the bank,
And a piece of land in Manitoba.
But just as I was slipping away, I had a vision
In a last delirium:
I saw myself lying nailed in a box
With a white linen tie and a boutonnière,
And my wife was sitting by a window
Somewhere far away, looking out at the sea;
She looked so relaxed, healthy, and full,
Even though her hair was white.
And she smiled and said to a Black waiter:
“Another slice of roast beef, George.
Here’s a nickel for your trouble.”

How did you feel, you libertarians,
Who used your talents to rally for noble causes
Around the bar, as if Liberty
Could only be found at the pub
Or at a table, drinking?
How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,
Who nearly labeled me a tyrant
Dressed up as a moralist,
And as a stern-faced puritan scowling at Yorkshire pudding,
Roast beef and ale and good will and joyful cheer—
Things you never experienced in a bar in your life?
How did you feel after I was gone,
And your goddess, Liberty, revealed as a fraud,
Selling out the streets of Spoon River
To the arrogant giants
Who ran the bars from a distance?
Did it ever cross your mind that personal liberty
Is more about the freedom of thought,
Instead of just satisfying your cravings?

My parents believed I would be
As great as Edison or even better:
When I was a kid, I made balloons
And amazing kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones made from cans and string.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Molded clay and acted out
The villain in the “Octoroon.”
But then at twenty-one I got married
And had to make a living, so, to survive
I learned how to make watches
And ran the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—
Not about business, but about the engine
I tried to build.
And all of Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never did.
A few kind people thought my talent
Was somehow limited by the store.
That wasn't true.
The truth was this:
I just didn't have the brains.

I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney,
Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,
Because I handled property rights,
Even if it was by lamp-light, for thirty years,
In that poker room at the opera house.
And I tell you that Life’s a gambler
Who's way above us all.
No mayor alive can shut it down.
And if you lose, you can complain all you want;
You won’t get your money back.
He makes the odds tough to beat;
He rigs the game to exploit your weaknesses
And not your strengths.
And he gives you seventy years to play:
Because if you can’t win in seventy,
You probably can’t win at all.
So, if you lose, get out of the room—
Leave the room when your time is up.
It’s pointless to sit and mess with the cards
And curse your bad luck, heavy-eyed,
Whining to keep trying again.

If the knowledgeable Supreme Court of Illinois
Understood the details of every case
As well as it does with a case of rape,
It would be the greatest court in the world.
A jury made up mostly of neighbors, with “Butch” Weldy
As the foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes
And two votes on a case like this:
Richard Bandle and I had an issue over a fence,
And my wife and Mrs. Bandle argued
About whether Ipava was a better town than Table Grove.
I woke up one morning feeling the love of God
Overflowing in my heart, so I went to see Richard
To resolve the fence issue in the spirit of Jesus Christ.
I knocked on the door, and his wife opened;
She smiled and invited me in.
I stepped inside— she slammed the door and started to scream,
“Get your hands off me, you low down scoundrel!”
Just then her husband walked in.
I waved my hands, speechless with shock.
He went for his gun, and I ran out.
But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife
Believed a word she said.

I wanted to go to college
But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me.
So I made gardens and raked the lawns
And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings
And worked hard just to make a living.
I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,
But how could I do that with what I made?
And there was Aunt Persis, over seventy
Sitting in a wheelchair, barely alive
With her throat so paralyzed that when she swallowed
The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck—
A foodie still, using her income
For mortgages, always worrying
About her notes and rents and papers.
That day I was sawing wood for her,
And reading Proudhon in between.
I went inside for a drink of water,
And there she sat asleep in her chair,
Proudhon lying on the table,
And a bottle of chloroform on the book,
Something she sometimes used for a toothache!
I soaked a handkerchief in chloroform
And held it to her nose until she died.—
Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon
Steadying my hand, and the coroner
Said she died of heart failure.
I married Delia and got the money—
A joke on you, Spoon River?

I wish I could have plunged my hands
Into the flower heads buzzing with bees,
Into the fiery core
Of life's light, the sun of joy.
What are anthers or petals worth
Or halo rays? Just mockeries, shadows
Of the flower's heart, the central flame.
All of this is yours, young passerby;
Step into the banquet room with the thought;
Don’t sneak in as if unsure
Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours!
Don’t just take a little, turning away
With a shy “Thank you,” when you’re hungry.
Is your soul alive? Then let it feast!
Leave no balconies to climb;
No milk-white breasts to rest upon;
No golden heads to share pillows;
No wine cups while the wine is sweet;
No joys of body or soul,
You will surely die, but die while living
In deep blue, entranced and united,
Kissing the queen-bee, Life!

Reading Ovid’s sad story of Itys,
Son of the love between Tereus and Procne, killed
Because of Tereus’s forbidden desire for Philomela,
His flesh served to Tereus by Procne,
And Tereus’s anger, with the murderer pursuing
Until the gods turned Philomela into a nightingale,
Lute of the rising moon, and Procne into a swallow.
Oh, poets and artists of ancient Greece,
Capturing dreams and wisdom in little incense burners,
Offering priceless incense, forever fragrant,
A breath of which clears the eyes of the soul.
How I breathed in its sweetness here in Spoon River!
The incense burner opening when I had lived and learned
How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us,
Not realizing what we do, consume their flesh;
And all of us become singers, even if just
Once in our lives, or sadly, turn into swallows,
Chirping amidst cold winds and falling leaves!

Look at those clasped hands!
Are they hands saying goodbye or welcoming,
Hands I helped or hands that helped me?
Wouldn't it be interesting to carve a hand
With a turned-up thumb, like Elagabalus?
And over there is a broken chain,
Maybe the idea of the weakest link—
But what was it?
And lambs, some lying down,
Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd—
Some carrying a cross, one foot raised—
Why not carve a few ruins?
And fallen columns!
Please carve the pedestal,
Or the foundations; let us see what caused the fall.
And compasses and math tools,
In irony of those beneath, clueless
About determinants and calculus changes.
And anchors, for those who never sailed.
And gates left open—yes, they were;
You left them open and stray goats wandered into your garden.
And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi—
So did you—with one eye.
And angels blowing trumpets—you are being announced—
It's your horn and your angel and your family's reputation.
That's all fine, but for me,
I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River
That are my true epitaph, more enduring than stone.

I tried to win the nomination
For president of the County board
And I delivered speeches all over the County
Condemning Solomon Purple, my opponent,
As an enemy of the people,
In league with the enemies of mankind.
Young idealists, broken warriors,
Hobbling on one crutch of hope,
Souls that risked everything for the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven’s command,
Gathered around me and followed my voice
As the savior of the County.
But Solomon won the nomination;
And then I turned around,
And rallied my supporters to his banner,
And made him victorious, made him the King
Of the Golden Mountain with the door
That closed behind me just as I entered,
Flattered by Solomon’s invitation,
To be the County board’s secretary.
And out in the cold stood all my followers:
Young idealists, broken warriors
Hobbling on one crutch of hope—
Souls that risked everything for the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven’s command,
Watching the Devil kick the Millennium
Over the Golden Mountain.

Horses and people are pretty much the same.
There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
Black as a cat and fit as a deer,
With a fiery eye, ready to go,
And he could reach the fastest speed
Of any racer around Spoon River.
But just when you'd think he couldn't lose,
With his lead of fifty yards or more,
He’d rear up and throw the rider,
And fall back, all tangled up,
Completely falling apart.
You see, he was a total fake:
He couldn’t win, he couldn’t work,
He was too light to haul or plow with,
And no one wanted colts from him.
And when I tried to drive him—well,
He ran away and got me killed.

There would be a knock at the door
And I would get up at midnight and head to the shop,
Where late travelers would hear me hammering
Dark boards and tacking satin.
And often I thought about who would join me
In the distant land, our names the topic
Of conversation during the same week, because I've noticed
Two always go together.
Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant;
And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf;
And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner,
When he prayed to outlive Editor Whedon,
And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane;
And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden;
And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock;
And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones;
And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine.
And I, the most serious man in town,
Set off with Daisy Fraser.

I bought every kind of machine out there—
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills, rakes, plows, and threshers—
And they all sat in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped, and beaten up,
Because I had no sheds to store them in,
And no real use for most of them.
In the end, when I thought it through,
There by my window, becoming clearer
About myself as my pulse slowed down,
I looked at one of the mills I bought—
Which I didn’t need at all,
And never operated—
A nice machine, once shiny and new,
Eager to get to work,
Now with its paint faded away—
I saw myself as a good machine
That Life had never put to use.

My mom was for women’s rights
And my dad was the wealthy miller at London Mills.
I dreamed about the world's injustices and wanted to fix them.
After my father died, I set out to explore different people and places
To learn how to make the world better.
I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome
And the ruins of Athens, and the ruins of Thebes.
I sat by moonlight among the ancient graves of Memphis.
There, I was lifted by wings of fire,
And a voice from above said to me:
“Injustice and Untruth destroyed them.
Go forth! Preach Justice! Preach Truth!”
I rushed back to Spoon River
To say goodbye to my mom before starting my mission.
Everyone saw a strange light in my eyes.
And gradually, when I spoke, they realized
What I had been thinking.
Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to a debate
On the topic, (I taking the negative):
“Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World.”
He won the debate by finally saying,
“Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt,
Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:
‘What is Truth?’”

I looked like Abraham Lincoln.
I was one of you, Spoon River, in all togetherness,
But I stood up for property rights and for order.
I attended church regularly,
Sometimes showing up at your town meetings to warn you
About the dangers of discontent and envy
And to speak out against those who tried to tear apart the Union,
And to highlight the threat of the Knights of Labor.
My success and my example are unavoidable influences
On your young men and on future generations,
Despite the attacks from newspapers like the Clarion;
I was a frequent visitor in Springfield
When the Legislature was in session,
To protect against assaults on the railroads
And on the people building up the state.
Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, alike
Despite the whispers that I was a lobbyist.
I moved quietly through the world, wealthy and admired.
Eventually I died, of course, but now I lie here
Under a stone with an open book carved on it
And the words “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
And now, you world-changers, who gained nothing in life
And in death have no stones or epitaphs,
How do you feel about your silence from mouths silenced
By the dust of my successful career?

Why did you hurt me with your harsh ways
If you didn’t want me to speak about them?
And suffocate me with your foolishness,
If you didn’t want me to reveal them?
And nail me with the stakes of cruelty,
If you didn’t want me to pull them out
And throw them back at you?
And starve me because I refused to follow you,
If you didn’t want me to challenge your oppression?
I could have been as peaceful
As William Wordsworth if it weren’t for you!
But what a coward you are, Spoon River,
When you pushed me to stand in a magic circle
By the sword of Truth drawn!
And then to complain and curse your wounds,
And curse my strength who stood and laughed
In the midst of ironic lightning!

Here! You sons of the men
Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge,
And defeated Black Hawk at Starved Rock,
Rise up! Fight against the descendants of those
Who bought land in the loop when it was just sand,
And sold blankets and guns to Grant's army,
And served in legislatures in the early days,
Taking bribes from the railroads!
Rise up! Fight against the fakes and phonies,
The pretenders and show-offs of the social scene
And the naive folks whose daughters marry counts;
And the leeches on great ideas,
And the loud advocates of big causes,
And the heirs of old crimes.
Rise up! Make the city yours,
And the State yours—
You who are the sons of the hard-working farmers of the forties!
By God! If you do not eliminate these pests,
My vengeful spirit will destroy
Your city and your state.

How many times, during the twenty years
I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
Did you ignore the meetings and strategy sessions,
And leave the responsibility on my shoulders
Of protecting and fighting for the people’s cause?—
Sometimes because you were sick;
Or your grandmother was sick;
Or you drank too much and passed out;
Or you just thought: “He is our leader,
Everything will be fine; he’s on our side;
We just have to follow him.”
But oh, how you criticized me when I stumbled,
And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you,
For stepping out of the meeting for a moment,
When the enemies of the people, gathered there,
Waited and watched for a chance to destroy
The Sacred Rights of the People.
You common crowd! I left the meeting
To go to the restroom.

Nothing in life is foreign to you:
I was a broke girl from Summum
Who stepped off the morning train in Spoon River.
All the houses stood before me with closed doors
And drawn shades—I was locked out;
I had no place or role in any of them.
And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
A stone castle surrounded by paths and gardens
With workers around the place on guard
And the County and State supporting it
For its proud owner, full of arrogance.
I was so hungry I had a vision:
I saw a giant pair of scissors
Drop from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,
And cut the house in two like a curtain.
But at the “Commercial” I saw a guy
Who winked at me as I asked for a job—
It was Wash McNeely’s son.
He was the link in the chain of title
To half my ownership of the mansion,
Through a breach of promise lawsuit—the scissors.
So, you see, the house, from the day I was born,
Was just waiting for me.

When I died, the library I set up for Spoon River, And managed for the benefit of curious minds, Was sold at auction in the town square, As if to erase the last trace Of my memory and influence. For those of you who couldn’t see the value Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy” And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,” Were really the ones in power in the village, And often you asked me “What’s the point of knowing the evil in the world?” I’m out of your way now, Spoon River, Pick your own good and call it good. For I could never make you understand That no one knows what is good Who doesn’t know what is evil; And no one knows what is true Who doesn’t know what is false.

It was just a small house with two rooms—
Almost like a child’s playhouse—
With barely five acres of land around it;
And I had so many kids to feed
And take care of, and a wife who was unwell
From having so many children.
One day, lawyer Whitney came by
And showed me that Christian Dallman,
Who owned three thousand acres,
Had bought the eighty acres next to mine
In eighteen hundred and seventy-one
For eleven dollars at a tax sale,
While my father was dying.
That’s how the argument started, and I ended up in court.
But when we looked at the evidence,
A survey of the land made it clear
That Dallman’s tax deed included my land
And my little house with two rooms.
I had it coming for provoking him.
I lost my case and lost my home.
I walked out of the courtroom and started working
As Christian Dallman’s tenant.

I sat on the bank above Bernadotte
And dropped crumbs into the water,
Just to watch the minnows bump into each other,
Until the strongest got the prize.
Or I went to my little pasture,
Where the peaceful pigs were sleeping in the mud,
Or gently nudging each other,
And emptied a basket of yellow corn,
And watched them push and squeal and bite,
And trample each other to get the corn.
And I noticed how Christian Dallman’s farm,
Of more than three thousand acres,
Swallowed up the patch of Felix Schmidt,
Like a bass swallowing a minnow
And I say if there’s anything in man—
Spirit, or conscience, or the breath of God
That makes him different from fish or pigs,
I’d like to see it in action!

When I first came to Spoon River
I didn’t know if what they told me
Was true or false.
They would bring me the epitaphs
And hang around the shop while I worked
And say “He was so kind,” “He was so wonderful,”
“She was the sweetest woman,” “He was a devoted Christian.”
And I carved whatever they wanted,
Completely unaware of the truth.
But later, as I lived among the people here,
I realized how close the epitaphs
Were to the lives of those they were made for as they died.
Yet, I still carved whatever they paid me to carve
And became complicit in the false narratives
Of the stones,
Just like a historian who writes
Without knowing the truth,
Or because he's pressured to hide it.

It was moonlight, and the earth sparkled With new-fallen frost. It was midnight and not a soul was out. Out of the chimney of the courthouse A gray plume of smoke leapt and chased The northwest wind. I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs And leaned it against the frame of the trapdoor In the ceiling of the portico, And I crawled under the roof and among the rafters And tossed a lighted handful of oil-soaked waste Among the seasoned wood. Then I came down and slipped away. In a little while, the fire bell rang— Clang! Clang! Clang! And the Spoon River ladder company Arrived with a dozen buckets and started pouring water On the amazing bonfire, growing hotter Higher and brighter, until the walls collapsed And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood Fell like trees when the woodcutter fells them. When I came back from Joliet There was a new courthouse with a dome. For I was punished like all who destroy The past for the sake of the future.