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Edgar Lee Masters
After I got religion and steadied down
They gave me a job in the canning works,
And every morning I had to fill
The tank in the yard with gasoline,
That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
To heat the soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring,
The air grew still and seemed to heave,
And I shot up as the tank exploded,
And down I came with both legs broken,
And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
For someone left a blow—fire going,
And something sucked the flame in the tank.
The Circuit Judge said whoever did it
A black hat
and some shoes
could not get up
a ladder, and fell
to dancing—
the first dance,
the first great kill.
I have no mouth but
I must scream,
says the wind.
My tongue knows its
own taste: the half-
frozen stream.
You draw me & I’ll
draw you, I tell
my childhood self.
We lean like ladders
against the clouds.
With one listening foot I feel
for the next rung down.
He climbed up the ladder, one, two, three
The ground fell lower, three, two, one
The sky came closer, one, two, three.
Up went the kid, four, five, six
Down went the ground, six, five, four
Up was the Future, bright and bold
Down was the Past, dull and dead.
The kid sat at the top
And the slide took him down
In one smooth rush,
On a roly, jolly ride.
The wind hit his face,
The ground zoomed up -
And thud! He was back where all it began.
morning fog
the ladder higher than
the house
I THOUGHT of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs
a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than
I used to and I sing slower handling the trowel
afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky
and the mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
A LADDER sticking up at the open window,
The top of an old ladder ;
And all of Summer is there.
Great waves and tufts of wistaria surge across the window,
And a thin, belated blossom
Jerks up and down in the sunlight ;
Purple translucence against the blue sky.
"Tie back this branch," I say,
But my hands are sticky with leaves.
And my nostrils widen to the smell of crushed green.
The ladder moves uneasily at the open window.
And I call to the man beneath,
"Tie back that branch."
There is a ladder leaning against the window-sill.
And a mutter of thunder in the air.
All day, all day I brush
My golden strands of hair;
All day I wait and wait. . . .
Ah, who is there?
Who calls? Who calls? The gold
Ladder of my long hair
I loose and wait. . . . and wait. . . .
Ah, who is there?
She left at dawn. . . . I am blind
In the tangle of my long hair. . . .
Is it she? the witch? the witch?
Ah, who is there?