A Poem for Father's Day

Yes, I know Father's Day was last Sunday, but I just found this poem today.  It's by an American poet named Joseph Fasano (born 1982).

My Father Watching Baseball

What he doesn't say

is he wanted this with all his life,

the smell of grass, the crack of bat

each morning,

the whole world simplified to wonder.

You have to understand

he had nothing.  You have to understand

his father still carried a war in him

and my father had to carry it also.

It was 1973, once.  My father stood

on the mound of Yankee Stadium, the men

who had invited him were watching,

and he leaned back and asked his life

not to fail him.  It didn't

work out, as the cheap books say.

A whole life selling tools and hope to strangers.

(A life will try to call its prison

beauty.  Every morning, every night

of trial.)

But now he sits

in the aching of his rocker

and mutters "we" when he means

a team of strangers, and calls me up

to ask me if I saw it,

and tells me of a game I have no stake in,

and the green grass, and the trouble

of his country,

and the things men do

to win the game they're playing,

the double play, the bunt, the K, the homer,

and his favorite play of all,

the sacrifice.

Where I Come From

Tempted and tried, we're oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long;

While there are others living about us,

Never molested, though in the wrong.

When death has come and taken our loved ones

It leaves our home so lonely and drear

Then do we wonder why others prosper

Living so wicked year after year.

If I could pick any work of poetry to summarize the culture in which I was raised, these are the verses I would pick.  Few other communities are so willing to complain to God.  In most cultures, as far as I can tell, they teach children that life is unfair and that you are supposed to deal with it.  But we were taught to brood on the unfairness of it all -- even in church.

Now we can go back and forth on the advantages and disadvantages of this attitude.  My own view is that blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:  for they shall be filled.  And if my culture is one that broods on injustice, it is also very capable of imagining grace:

Faithful 'til death, said our loving Master

A few more days to labor and wait

Toils of the road will then seem as nothing

As we sweep through the beautiful gates.

Sounds Like Kentucky

 "{T}he land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven:  a land which the Lord thy God careth for:  the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."

Deuteronomy 11:11-12 (KJV)

Find the River

On October 12, 1992, I started my first job in Washington, D.C.  One week before I started, R.E.M. released its greatest album:  Automatic for the People.  The last song on that album, "Find the River," is addressed to someone who is at the beginning of his or her career.  It makes me happy that R.E.M. released this song just as my career was beginning, and it's full of sound advice -- especially for someone who grew up next to a river.  I only figured made these connections a few months ago, but I listened to this album almost every day for a year back in 1992 and 1993, so I probably benefited by osmosis:

Find the River

Hey now, little speedyhead

The read on the speed-meter says

You have to go to task in the city.

Where people drown and people serve

Don't be shy, your just dessert

Is only just light years to go.

    Me, my thoughts are flower strewn

    With ocean storm, bayberry moon.

    I have got to leave to find my way,

    Watch the road and memorize

    This life that passed before my eyes

    And nothing is going my way.

The ocean is the river's goal.

A need to leave the water knows

We're closer now than light years to go.

    I have got to find the river.

    Bergamot and vetiver

    Run through my head and fall away.

    Leave the road and memorize

    This life that passed before my eyes

    And nothing is going my way.

There's no one left to take the lead

But I tell you and you can see

We're closer now than light years to go.

Pick up here and chase the ride

The river empties to the tide

Fall into the ocean.

    The river to the ocean goes

    A fortune for the undertow

    None of this is going my way.

    There is nothing left to throw

    Of ginger, lemon, indigo

    Coriander stem and rose of hay.

    Strength and courage overrides

    The privileged and weary eyes

    Of river poet search naiveté.

    Pick up here and chase the ride

    The river empties to the tide

    All of this is coming your way.

Written by BerryBuckMillsStipe (1992), as they used to say on the R.E.M. albums, although my guess is that these words came from Michael Stipe.

Where Do You Go After Hamilton?

OK, so let's say that you have really enjoyed Hamilton, the big musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  But that was several years ago, and now you're ready to try another recent musical.  You're in luck.  The 21st century has been very good for the Broadway musical so far.  Here are a few recent shows that are worth trying:

The Last Five Years (2002):  Jason Robert Brown wrote this show, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2002 and has developed a cult following ever since.  The Last Five Years tells the story of a marriage that failed.  It features only two characters:  Jamie and Cathy, who take turns singing songs from their perspective on the relationship.  The show opens with Cathy singing about the end of the relationship, and then Jamie comes on to give us his perspective on the beginning of the relationship.  From then on, Cathy's songs go backward in time, while Jamie's move forward.  In the last number, Cathy is singing about the beginning the relationship, while Jamie is singing about the end.  In the middle the two actors come together for a duet -- the only time they sing together.  The movie with Anna Kendrick is pretty good, but nothing matches the original off-Broadway cast recording with Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott.

Next to Normal (2008):  Written by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, this show won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making it only the eighth musical in history to do so.  (In 2016, Hamilton became the ninth.)  Next to Normal tells the story of a suburban American family where the mother is struggling with bipolar disorder, and the effects of her disease on the rest of the family.  This is not something you want to listen to just for fun -- it's entertaining, but the story is very intense, and this show deserved every award that it got.  The original cast recording allows you to follow the whole story from beginning to end, and it's really worth paying attention.

Murder Ballad (2012):  Written by Juliana Nash and Julia Jordan, this is another Off-Broadway show with a cult following.  The title comes from the old ballads about murder and revenge that were so popular in 19th century America, and the story is about a love triangle gone wrong.  You have to be in the mood for this sort of thing, but if you are this show is very entertaining.

Come from Away (2017):  Not all modern musicals are depressing.  Written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, Come from Away tells the true story of how 38 plane, carrying approximately 7,000 passengers, were diverted to an airport in Newfoundland due to the events of 9/11.  Come from Away has many qualities of those old shows from the 1970's where a mixed collection of characters are thrown together for an adventure, with some folks falling in love and others learning life lessons.  Small-town life doesn't always get friendly treatment on Broadway, but the presentation of life on Newfoundland is very moving.

Hadestown (off-Broadway in 2016, on Broadway in 2019):  Anais Mitchell originally wrote Hadestown as a concept album that retold the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a world that looks like America in the 1930's.  The album developed a following, and over time Mitchell kept polishing the songs and the arrangements until it eventually became a massive hit on Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical.  I cannot praise this show too highly -- it is a masterpiece about the relationship between humans and tragedy.  I like the Broadway version of the soundtrack, but my kids prefer the off-Broadway version.

A River Runs Through It

Here is the ending of Norman Maclean's masterpiece, A River Runs Through It, the best story ever told from the perspective of an elder brother.  If you want to understand what all of this means, go read the book:

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't.  Like many fly fishermen in western Montana, where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.  Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

Frost at Midnight

 In the lockdown I've been paying more attention to art.  I've listened to a lot more music, I've read more fiction, and I've read more poetry.  I found a collection called Poems that Make Grown Men Cry:  100 Men on the Words that Move Them.  It's pretty good.  The editors asked various men to identify a poem that made them cry and to explain why.  They then put the explanations and the poems into the book.

One of the poems is "Frost at Midnight," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Coleridge was both a poetic genius and a drug addict, and his career has a Rock God quality to it.  At his best, very few poets in English can match him.  In 1798, when he was 26 years old, he wrote a poem about his baby daughter.  Here's how it begins:

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind.  The owlet's cry

Came loud -- and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings:  save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

So there he is, sitting up at night, in the middle of winter, watching his baby daughter while she sleeps, and thinking about his life.  If you are the father of a daughter, you know what that's like.  Coleridge then reflects on the meaning of life, and of his own childhood, before coming back to his daughter.  All of this takes awhile.  Finally, he thinks about how he grew up in London, "the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,/And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars."  However, he plans to raise his daughter in the country.  So, like all fathers of daughters, he promises that she will live better than he did.  And with that thought, the poem really takes off, before eventually coming back to the frost:

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags:  so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher!  he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Here's the thing.  I have had all of those thoughts.  I have sat up at night with my sleeping children, and felt the great ambitions roiling and roaring inside of me.  But I could never figure out how to phrase them.  So I'm really glad that Coleridge did.  That's what poetry does.  And that's why it can make grown men cry.

A Timely Thought from Isaiah

Come, my people,
enter thou into thy chambers,
and shut thy doors about thee:

hide thyself as it were for a little moment,
until the indignation be overpast.

Isaiah 26:20 (KJV).

Day of Prayer

Some people treated today as a National Day of Prayer.  Of course, throughout most of human history, plagues have simply been part of existence -- and Christians have had many, many occasions to pray about them.  The 1662 version of the English Book of Common Prayer contains the following prayer for use "In the time of any common Plague or Sickness":

O Almighty God,

who in thy wrath didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness,
for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron;
and also in the time of King David,
didst slay with the plague of Pestilence threescore and ten thousand;
and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest;

Have pity upon us miserable sinners,
who now are visited with great sickness and mortality;
that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement,
and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing,
so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sickness,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

To an Athlete Dying Young

A.E. Housman wrote this poem in the 1890's, and it has been one of the most famous poems in English ever since.  I've been struggling to think of something to say about Kobe Bryant, but I kept thinking of this:

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel uup
The still-defended challenge cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

I'm always wanting to remind people that this song does not mean what most people thinks it does.  The point of the song is not that cowboys are heroic, but that the narrator wrecked his life by imitating cowboys.

It's a brilliant song, and I would post the lyrics on here, but I can't find a version that shows the proper way to show the copyright.  The song was written by Sharon Vaughn, and she's apparently a genius.

A Song from Hadestown

Anais Mitchell is a folk singer from Vermont.  In 2010, she released a concept album called Hadestown.  The album told the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the context of a Depression-era U.S. town.  Over time, Hadestown's audience grew and grew, to the point where it became a full-fledged Broadway show.  Last year, it won the Tony Award for Best Musical, making Mitchell the only woman to single-handedly write a show that won that award.

I'm not here to review the whole show, which is remarkably clever and tuneful.  Instead, I want to focus on one particular song.  Discouraged with her poor economic prospects in a depressed economy, Eurydice goes to the Underworld in the hope of finding prosperity.  When she gets there, she finds that Hades has everyone working all the time on a giant wall.  To explain this phenomenon, Mitchell has written a folk song that does a remarkable job of capturing the logic of modern capitalism -- which puts enormous pressure on everyone to work so that they can get more work.  I've long been surprised that we don't see more protest art about modern capitalism, but Mitchell has given a strong entry here with a number that echoes "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."  She has also shown that when you are writing English, do not underestimate the power of words with only one syllable.

"Why We Build the Wall" takes the form of a call-and-response between Hades and the Dead.  The next time you are called into a meeting on business development, you might want to think about this song:

Why do we build the wall
My children, my children?
Why do we build the wall?

Why do we build the wall?
We build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free.

How does the wall keep us free
My children, my children?
How does the wall keep us free?

How does the wall keep us free?
The wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free.

Who do we call the enemy
My children, my children?
Who do we call the enemy?

Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free.

Because we have and they have not
My children, my children
Because they want what we have got.

Because we have and they have not
Because they want what we have got
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free.

What do we have that they should want
My children, my children?
What do we have that they should want?

What do we have that they should want?
We have a wall to work upon
We have work and they have none

And our work is never done
My children, my children!
And the war is never won!

The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
We build the wall to keep us free.


Copyright 2010 righteous babe records, all rights reserved.

You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive

Darrell Scott is a genius.  He was born in 1957 in London, Kentucky, but moved to East Gary, Indiana as a child.  By the time he was a teenager, he was a professional musician in Southern California.  He later moved to Toronto and Boston, where he attended Tufts University.  Since 1995, according to Wikipedia, he has lived in Nashville, Tenn.

In 1997, he did an album called "Aloha from Nashville," and that album contains the second-best song ever written about Kentucky.  (Stephen Foster wrote the best song about Kentucky.)  I've spent a lot of time trying to understand Kentucky this year -- it seems so far from Northern Virginia these days.  But Darrell Scott is a genius, and he figured it out better than I will a long time ago:


You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive

In the deep, dark hills of eastern Kentucky 
That's the place where I trace my bloodline 
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone 
"You will never leave Harlan alive" 

Well my grandad's dad walked down Katahrin's Mountain 
And he asked Tillie Helton to be his bride 
He said, "Won't you walk with me out of the mouth of this holler 
Or we'll never leave Harlan alive" 

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning 
And the sun goes down about three in the day 
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew your drinking 
And you spend your life just thinking how to get away 

No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains 
Til a man from the northeast arrived 
Waving hundred dollar bills, he said "I'll pay you for your minerals" 
But he never left Harlan alive 

Well Granny, she sold out cheap and they moved out west to Pineville 
To a farm where Big Richland River winds 
And I'll bet they danced them a jig, and they laughed and sang a new song 
"Who said we'd never leave Harlan alive?" 

But the times, they got hard and tobacco wasn't selling 
And old Granddad knew what he'd do to survive 
He went and dug for Harlan coal and sent the money back to Granny 
But he never left Harlan alive.

The Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan

For the first time since 1962, when John Steinbeck won the honor, the Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to an American-born man.  It's the first time any American has won since Toni Morrison in 1993.  And the winner is Bob Dylan, who was honored "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

I'm pretty happy for Bob Dylan, and I think he's a worthy winner.  Dylan wrote many different types of songs and many different types of moods, and your preferences about his material will be heavily influenced by how your moods and his match up.  For me personally, my favorite Dylan songs are the ones with long, twisting lines that he was writing between 1964 and 1966.  Here is one of my favorites, from 1965.  It not only seems to capture all the bad stuff that was about to happen to the country in the late 1960's, it also captures a certain mood -- a combination of recklessness, anger, and despair -- that is common in modern times:

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

The People's Anthem, by Ebenezer Elliott (1848)

This poem, written in England in 1848, has been on my mind a lot lately.  It plays on Britain's ancient national anthem, which famously asks God to Save the Queen (or King).  Elliott asks when will God save the people, which seems like a pretty good question.

This poem is best known as part of the 1970's musical Godspell, where it is called "Save the People."  I love the Godspell version, but I want to give credit to the original poet.  Ebenezer Elliott was a successful iron merchant and steel manufacturer in the North of England, but he had known hard times and he became famous for his poetry on behalf of the little guy.  Some people (especially in Washington) wonder that a successful businessman would want to do anything other than grind the people into dust, but thankfully mankind is more complicated than that.

The People's Anthem

When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy!  When?
Not kings and lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they!
Let them not pass, like weeds, away!
Their heritage a sunless day!
God save the people!

Shall crime bring crime for ever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, O Father!
That man shall toil for wrong?
"No!" say thy mountains; "No!" thy skies;
"Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
And songs be heard instead of sighs."
God save the people!

When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy!  When?
The people, Lord!  The people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people!  Thine they are;
Thy children, as thy angels fair;
Save them from bondage and despair!
God save the people!

Isaiah 40: 1-8 (KJV)

At my church, everyone is supposed to read the Bible in 2015, using a schedule whereby we read the Bible in chronological order.  We are now up to Isaiah, which has encouraged me to post one of my favorite of all Bible passages:

Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people,
saith your God.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her,
that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned:
for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
"Prepare ye the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

"Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places plain:
and the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together:
for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."

The voice said, "Cry."

And he said, "What shall I cry?"

"All flesh is grass,
and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
the grass withereth,
the flower fadeth:
because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it:
surely the people is grass.

"The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth:
but the word of our God shall stand for ever."

Something Robert Penn Warren Wrote That Did Not Win The Pulitzer

He won for fiction in 1947 for All the King's Men, and he won for poetry in 1958 for Promises: Poems 1954-1956. But Guthrie's Robert Penn Warren did not win for You, Emperors, and Others: Poems 1957-1960, which is where "Mother Makes the Biscuits" comes from. I don't care; I love it--plus, it's really hard to repeat.

Mother makes the biscuits,
Father makes the laws,
Grandma wets the bed sometimes,
Kitty-cats have claws.

Mother sweeps the kitchen,
Father milks the cow,
Grandpa leaves his pants unbuttoned,
Puppy-dogs bark, bow-wow.

All do as God intends,
The sun sets in the west,
Father shaves his chin, scrape-scrape,
Mother knows best.

Clap hands, children,
Clap hands and sing!
Hold hands together, children,
And dance in a ring,

For the green worm sings on the leaf,
The black beetle folds hands to pray,
And the stones in the field wash their faces clean
To meet break of day.

But we may see this only
Because all night we have stared
At the black miles past where stars are
Till the stars disappeared.

Benjamin Franklin Was Smarter than You Think

Here's an epitaph that Franklin composed for himself when he was only 22 years old:

The Body of B. Franklin,

Printer;

Like the Cover of an old Book,

Its Contents torn out,

And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be wholly lost:

For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more,

In a new & more perfect Edition,

Corrected and Amended

By the Author.

Carl Sandburg Is Back From the Dead, and He's Celebrating the Living

A Poem from Robert Frost

It's the time of year when folks are counting up their savings, or getting their year-end bonuses, or checking on how their portfolios did over the last 12 months.  So today we present a poem about money, which sounds as if it were written by a demented version of Dr. Seuss.  Notice that it was published during the early years of the Great Depression.  (If you want to know more about Abishag, look up the first chapter of First Kings):


Provide, Provide (1934)

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag.

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all.  Provide, provide!