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Edgar Lee Masters
You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,
When Chase Henry voted against the saloons
To revenge himself for being shut off.
But none of you was keen enough
To follow my steps, or trace me home
As Chase’s spiritual brother.
Do you remember when I fought
The bank and the courthouse ring,
For pocketing the interest on public funds?
And when I fought our leading citizens
For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?
And when I fought the water works
For stealing streets and raising rates?
And when I fought the business men
Who fought me in these fights?
Then do you remember:
years of my life full
of horrid memory
taking me back into the river
that thin nation
all fury and revenge
cruel men never suffer
barbarous as the afternoon office
I drink a draft of desire.
A gun gives widowhood
and the discourse of revenge:
to meet and dissolve, to issue hurt.
I was glad to hear a sermon
too eloquent for a pulpit—
the talking rain.
Water to the ship, we met
the owners—we
brothers in the company—
and all our guns
were open
to revenge.
Enclosing, enclosing,
I can't breathe,
Properly.
Tainted, tainted,
The air is poisoned,
Dreadfully.
Jesting, jesting,
Your voice cuts me,
Painfully.
Teasing, teasing,
Playing games,
Cruelly.
Walking, walking,
Laughter rings,
Casually.
Plotting, plotting,
I enjoyed peeling your name,
off of my white wall.
I gave you all I had,
you brought little if at all.
Your red letters lay in scraps,
on my otherwise clean gray floor.
Next I get to scoop you up,
and throw you out the back door.
I know you didn’t mean it,
I really just don’t care.
I looks as if you just found out,
you get what you give and that’s fair.
Ain't no getting over it is there?
Painted blue when you'd rather be neutral.
Never asked for emotions,
But who ever asked you what you wanted?
No one...
Dull eyes, unable to cry.
Numbed hands, unable to hurt.
Crippled heart, unable to leap at the minimal mention of happiness.
Who did this to you?
Who made you hallow?
Is it really the one you think of?
Was told that you were loved,
So remind me what love is.
Dichotomy, contradicting,
Set fire to my carefree decisions.
Without hesitation, break me down.
Suppose you stood just five feet two,
And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candle light
Until you became an attorney at law?
And then suppose through your diligence,
And regular church attendance,
You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,
Collecting notes and mortgages,
And representing all the widows
In the Probate Court? And through it all
They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes
And your polished boots? And then suppose
You became the County Judge?
And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,
And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants
Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand
I wanted to be County Judge
One more term, so as to round out a service
Of thirty years.
But my friends left me and joined my enemies,
And they elected a new man.
Then a spirit of revenge seized me,
And I infected my four sons with it,
And I brooded upon retaliation,
Until the great physician, Nature,
Smote me through with paralysis
To give my soul and body a rest.
Did my sons get power and money?
Did they serve the people or yoke them,
To till and harvest fields of self?
For how could they ever forget
My face at my bed-room window,
Nothing in life is alien to you:
I was a penniless girl from Summum
Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
All the houses stood before me with closed doors
And drawn shades—I was barred out;
I had no place or part in any of them.
And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens
With workmen about the place on guard
And the County and State upholding it
For its lordly owner, full of pride.
I was so hungry I had a vision:
I saw a giant pair of scissors
Dip 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 man