48 Poverty poems

“There was poverty before money.” There was debtors’ prison before inmates, there was hunger prefossil, there was pain before a nervous system to convey it to the brain, there existed poverty before intelligence, or accountants, before narration; there was bankruptcy aswirl in nowhere, it was palpable where nothing was palpable, there was repossession in the gasses forming so many billion ... ; there was poverty—it had a tongue—in cooling ash, in marl, and coming loam, thirst in the few strands of hay slipping between a pitchfork’s wide tines, in the reptile and the first birds, poverty aloof and no mystery like God its maker; there was surely want in one steamed and sagging onion, there was poverty in the shard of bread sopped in the final drop of gravy you snatched from your brother’s mouth.

Evans? Yes, many a time I came down his bare flight Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen With its wood fire, where crickets sang Accompaniment to the black kettle’s Whine, and so into the cold Dark to smother in the thick tide Of night that drifted about the walls Of his stark farm on the hill ridge. It was not the dark filling my eyes And mouth apalled me; not even the drip Of rain like blood from the one tree Weather-tortured. It was the dark Silting the veins of that sick man I left stranded upon the vast And lonely shore of his bleak bed.

Southbound, downwardly mobile in A knocking ten-year-old LeSabre, Totaled once and salvaged, rust Gnawing at the rocker panels like Fire at the curtains in a melodrama, I imagine those for whom such news Must matter: sauve, smooth-featured types, Untroubled by the odd details Of racing forms or powerball, Who, while I drove truck or counted stock, Were wisely planning their estates, Diversifying portfolios, or buying A summer place with acreage. Yet how their evening now is shot! How flat the chardonnay, how bland The tips of tenderloin must taste! Of course, it’s not the Dow alone— The dollar’s through the roof, T-bills Have plunged, and, even now, the wife Is pussyfooting at the club. How birdsong-sweet and full of joy Seems my life by comparison: The Gulf’s two hours off, where rigs Pound at the solar plexus of The earth, and where, on moonlit nights, Perfumed mulattoes weave like snails By the shore, leaving shining trails.

They work fingers to bone & borrow smudged paper, then make promises to family, unmerciful gods, the unborn. Some eat a favorite meal three times in a row. Others partake only a pinch of soil before boarding half-broken boats & rubber rafts — half of the young women big with life inside them, flesh & blood for daydreams of the Arabian nights, as makeshift charts & constellations work their way through war & rumors of war. The smugglers count their loot. Hard winds rattle gongs over sea salt till the rusty engines die, & cries alert mermaid sirens as pirated schooners adrift under a mute sky rock to & fro, & the fight goes out of the few alive. Their loved ones & friends, lost folk songs, mountains & valleys, all left behind. Searchlights spot the dead hugging the living, & draglines raise only those who were braver than us. The lucky ones stumble out of stupor, tried by raging water beneath black skies, listening to the albatross talk.

And wherefore do the Poor complain? The rich man asked of me,— Come walk abroad with me, I said And I will answer thee. Twas evening and the frozen streets Were cheerless to behold, And we were wrapt and coated well, And yet we were a-cold. We met an old bare-headed man, His locks were few and white, I ask'd him what he did abroad In that cold winter's night: 'Twas bitter keen indeed, he said, But at home no fire had he, And therefore, he had come abroad To ask for charity. We met a young bare-footed child, And she begg'd loud and bold, I ask'd her what she did abroad When the wind it blew so cold; She said her father was at home And he lay sick a-bed, And therefore was it she was sent Abroad to beg for bread. We saw a woman sitting down Upon a stone to rest, She had a baby at her back And another at her breast; I ask'd her why she loiter'd there When the wind it was so chill; She turn'd her head and bade the child That scream'd behind be still. She told us that her husband served A soldier, far away, And therefore to her parish she Was begging back her way. We met a girl; her dress was loose And sunken was her eye, Who with the wanton's hollow voice Address'd the passers by; I ask'd her what there was in guilt That could her heart allure To shame, disease, and late remorse? She answer'd, she was poor. I turn'd me to the rich man then For silently stood he, You ask'd me why the Poor complain, And these have answer'd thee.

We have cried often when we have given them the little victualling we had to give them; we had to shake them, and they have fallen to sleep with the victuals in their mouths many a time. (parent of children working at a textile mill, to an 1832 Parliamentary inquiry into child employment) 1. They cry for children too tired to cry for themselves, daughters twelve, eleven, eight—eyes shutting down as a grate’s banked coals shut down at midnight, in the rising damp called ‘home.’ Too tired to eat after eighteen hours feeding looms whose steel teeth grind insatiably, the girls will be offered up again at dawn. Yet they are the lucky ones, to work where skylights hold swatches of the unaffordable blue. Imagine these girls’ mine-trapped cousins, hauling black rocks on sledges up tunnels of black air: half-undressed, belted, harnessed, saturated with the oil-blackened water they crawl through pumping ‘the lifeblood of British industry.’ Flogged for talking, Margaret Comeley, aged nine, can sometimes close her mouth around a piece of muffin—if she manages to keep it from the rats, ‘so ravenous they eat the corks out of our oil-flasks.’ Sarah Gooder fills her mouth with song ‘when I’ve light, but not in the dark; I dare not then.’ 2. Here is a working girl so filled with light she is pure song: her sun-bright bodice shines in counterpoint with her blue overskirt, and, from her forehead’s crescent of white linen, tapering light blazes a white path down arms and wrists to folds of spread blue cloth, like moonlight piloting the tide’s refrains. A Dutch milkmaid, Tanneke Everpoel, lucky enough to live in the Delft house where Vermeer’s eye and brush could catch the spill of morning light as her brief peacefulness brimmed over, serves here as a celebrant— bread heaped up on the altar-like table, wine transubstantiated into milk whose brilliance seems the source of the room’s light she pours forever from the earthenware’s black core. His pose; yet—all hers—underneath it (and signalled in her fixed eyes’ unconcern for the beholder) such complete immersion in what she does, that she is all she does and it is she, this offering-up of day. And he? When he was forty, the Sun King invaded Holland. No one wanted art. In debt to his baker for three years’ worth of bread, Vermeer, according to his widow, falling ‘into a frenzy,’ passed ‘from being healthy’ in ‘a day or a day and a half ... to being dead,’ ‘the very great burden of his children ... so taken to heart.’ 3. Knowing the earth is closer to the sun in winter won’t revive the street person sleeping towards cold death in a bus shelter. Bread in a painting won’t cure stomach ache. So Margaret dragged her great burden of coal while Sarah sat terrified in the dark, and neither knew Vermeer’s poised working girl, broke bread with her, shared her breaking light. The painting stood by, helpless to save them or him, and looking at it now cannot help anyone. Yet, it can cry for them, as parents take their children’s grief to heart: the beads of salt, shimmering on the bread like diamonds, can be tears the two girls shed down where no light sang their preciousness. The cradled pitcher’s brim can be their hearth, since it (and not the sky’s cold mine of stars) pours out what cannot shelter us, but feeds a hunger no daily bread can fill: for light— light that, like coal, comes from our earth; hunger that, unlike grief, is inexhaustible.

Ohdammit sez John I’m in trouble so I sed why John? John sez I got the bill for my insurance and I haven’t got no money to pay it cause I won’t get paid for swoking and bailing Keith Guymon’s hay till next week I done told him that would be just fine when he ast a week ago but LaVerne she went and opened the damn envelope on a chain letter and I aint got no time to write out twenty copies I got to get that hay finished so what am I posta do now? I sez what John? John sez it’s the damn govament sends them things out I know it and it works with the post office and the insurance to keep you in line I sez what John? John sez my brother oncet he got this chain letter back home he didn’t have no time to write out his copies neither it sez he has four days to wrote it before the luck comes good or bad it aint never good I heard of be he forgot back then it was $5,000 this feller got in four days and then later when the govament ruint the money he put on a zero it was $50,000 and then it was $100,000 now it sez he got $420,000 it’s the same guy it was in that letter back then just the numbers changed it’s the way the govament has to let us know how much he’s gone let the money be worth but the next day because he hadn’t wrote out his twenty letters he lost all that money but my brother he was busy too he didn’t do his letters the third day after he had to go kill these pigs for this man but this other feller was gone bring his milkcow down get her bred to my brother’s bull he told him go ahead and do it he sez he’d have his boy walk her down the road it wasn’t far so while my brother was gone his boy brought her down turnt her in the corral he climbt up on the fence to watch it might of been fine except the hogs been rooting up under the barn wall my brother he borrowed this lectric fence he strung it along the side of the barn so the bull mounts up on the milkcow she turns and backs him up against the barn he’s stuckt he gets his back feet tangled in that lectric fence one in front and one back he tries to move and he just tightens up the lectric wire that boy he sez you could hear it zzip zzip zipp that bull he starts to bellering milkcow she don’t know what’s going on so she backs him up tighter against the barn it isn’t no way he can get off he commences to jumping up and down on her and trying to get his feet loost of that lectric wire but he caint it goes zzip he bellers and she backs up more it goes zzip again it was like he was doing a dance like them crazy people do trying to get his legs loost hollering like a sonofabitch so it was hogs there too they heard it and here they come it wasn’t natural and a hog it won’t let nothing that’s not natural stay that way around them it has to get right or go away or die that boy sez they all run up grunted and squolt like hell when that didn’t work this one old mean bitching sow she run right in between them she bit that bull right on his seeds she wanted him to stop acting that way making all that noise jumping up and down like that right now that bull he just went over backwards right up against the barn like he’d been shot in the head knocked the whole goddam end of the barn down fell right on his back the end rafter come down on his chest it torn a piece of skin off his pecker to his seeds wide as your hand they swolt up like basketballs from the hogbite broke ribs they figured but it never did kill him that milkcow she wan’t finished she kept backing up and fell down right on top of him it was only the end of the barn come down the rest stood up that boy he’s ascairt he got daddy’s milkcow up off my brother’s bull he left he sed he seen enough for oncet my brother that night he’s coming home from killing them hogs he never knew none of this happened yet he’s driving see? and he’d lost his picking finger on his left hand in the leaf springs of a wagon when we’s kids so he’s driving left-handed and doing the gears and picking with his right hand it was a moon out so he’d turned off his pickup lights listening to the radio because his battery wasn’t much good he couldn’t do both while he was driving he couldn’t see good as he thot he could he hit this big chuckhole slung him right into the steering wheel he figured it would of broke his nose if he hand’t been picking but his hand took the cushion it only gave him a nosebleed but almost broke his hand where it hit his knuckles was bruised so bad he couldn’t even open and shut his fingers for a week he had to drive the rest of the way home left-handed and lean acrost and shift with that hand too he thot the other one was broke but it wasn’t he got home and the first thing he seen was the end of his barn out that bull standing there inside the barn with his head down low my brother thot he’d butted it down he run in the house to get his gun he was mad he would of kilt that bull but they told him how it happened so he didn’t he went out to look but it wasn’t no way they could get that bull to go back in that yard where them pigs was he wouldn’t go out the barn they him him acrost the butt with a board he’d just stand there he didn’t care no more they went in the house my brother he got out the dishpan and soaked some cold water so he lain his hand in it to get the swollen to go down he wouldn’t tell them how it happened at first but while he was setting there with his hand ducked he remembered that chain letter he jumped up and run to get it sloshed water all over the kitchen floor he was hollering how long’s it been? how long’s it been? they sez it happened this morning it was just his morning he sez whar? they sez when the sow bit the bull on his seeds knocked the barn down he hollers no not that how long’s it been since I got this here chain letter in the mail? they sez oh three days he sez goddam I only got one day left my brother he set up all night writing out his twenty copies he had to tape the pencil to his hand cause it was swole up his fingers wouldn’t bent they sed he even wrote some with his left hand it was so bad you couldn’t read the words he got them all done by sunup the fourth day like it sed and took it to the mailbox he waited all morning on the porch till they remembered it was Memoral Day the mail he wouldn’t come my brother he about had a worm he run out to the mailbox and got them letters he run over to his pickup and clumb in it wouldn’t crunk he’d run the battery down listening to the radio goddam my brother he was mad he busted the side winder with his head when the pickup wouldn’t turn over jumped out and slammed the door so hard it didn’t catch it bounce right back and hit him right on his swole-up hand it hurt so bad he sez he nearly fainted of the pain he knew he had to get them letters in the mail so he walked all the way to town it was more’n ten miles back then it worked nothing else happened they got the end back in the barn without it coming down but they had to shoot the bull finally and eat him because he wouldn’t do nothing just set there and waste away he’d seen enough they guessed it wasn’t no way he’d go back out there with them pigs in the corral since then ever time we seen a envelope in my family it looks like it might be a chain letter we don’t open it till we got time to set down right then and make out them twenty copies like it sez to do but this time LaVerne must of forgot it snuck up on her when I got home it was laying on the table and it wasn’t nothing I could do it was my name on the envelope I know it come from the insurance company it was two years ago the man’s wife from the insurance called she sez to LaVerne then that she wanted her to come to her house she wanted to tell her about selling Amway LaVerne she sez she wasn’t inarrested a week later here comes the insurance bill by god it’s gone up almost double I sez how come you didn’t go? you could of just set and nod now see what happened? but it was too late so I’m gone to have to stay up tonight writing chain letters I done wrote one to send to the insurance so he’ll know I did it and let the govament know I wrote him a note on the bottom and sez I’ll pay the insurance bill as soon as I can but things is tough all over I just hope he’ll understand I’d as soon right now rather not have no luck at all but I am willing to cooperate if that’s what my duty is as a patriotic American citizen

1 People who have no children can be hard: Attain a mail of ice and insolence: Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense Hesitate in the hurricane to guard. And when wide world is bitten and bewarred They perish purely, waving their spirits hence Without a trace of grace or of offense To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred. While through a throttling dark we others hear The little lifting helplessness, the queer Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous Lost softness softly makes a trap for us. And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of The malocclusions, the inconditions of love. 2 What shall I give my children? who are poor, Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land, Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand No velvet and no velvety velour; But who have begged me for a brisk contour, Crying that they are quasi, contraband Because unfinished, graven by a hand Less than angelic, admirable or sure. My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device. But I lack access to my proper stone. And plenitude of plan shall not suffice Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone To ratify my little halves who bear Across an autumn freezing everywhere. 3 And shall I prime my children, pray, to pray? Mites, come invade most frugal vestibules Spectered with crusts of penitents’ renewals And all hysterics arrogant for a day. Instruct yourselves here is no devil to pay. Children, confine your lights in jellied rules; Resemble graves; be metaphysical mules. Learn Lord will not distort nor leave the fray. Behind the scurryings of your neat motif I shall wait, if you wish: revise the psalm If that should frighten you: sew up belief If that should tear: turn, singularly calm At forehead and at fingers rather wise, Holding the bandage ready for your eyes.

to Somes from incarceration, Taunton State Hospital, 1972 gaunt, ugly deformed broken from the womb, and horribly shriven at the labor of their forefathers, if you check back scout around grey before actual time their sordid brains don’t work right, pinched men emaciated, piling up railroad ties and highway ditches blanched women, swollen and crudely numb ered before the dark of dawn scuttling by candlelight, one not to touch, that is, a signal panic thick peasants after the attitude at that time of their century, bleak and centrifugal they carry about them, tough disciplines of copper Indianheads. there are worse, whom you may never see, non-crucial around the spoke, these you do, seldom locked in Taunton State Hospital and other peon work farms drudge from morning until night, abandoned within destitute crevices odd clothes intent on performing some particular task long has been far removed there is no hope, they locked-in key’s; housed of course and there fed, poorly off sooted, plastic dishes, soiled grimy silver knives and forks, stamped Department of Mental Health spoons but the unshrinkable duties of any society produces its ill-kempt, ignorant and sore idiosyncrasies. There has never been a man yet, whom no matter how wise can explain how a god, so beautiful he can create the graces of formal gardens, the exquisite twilight sunsets in splendor of elegant toolsmiths, still can yield the horror of dwarfs, who cannot stand up straight with crushed skulls, diseases on their legs and feet unshaven faces of men and women, worn humped backs, deformed necks, hare lips, obese arms distended rumps, there is not a flame shoots out could ex- tinguish the torch of any liberty’s state infection. 1907, My Mother was born, I am witness t- o the exasperation of gallant human beings at g- od, priestly fathers and Her Highness, Holy Mother the Church persons who felt they were never given a chance, had n- o luck and were flayed at suffering. They produced children with phobias, manias and depression, they cared little for their own metier, and kept watch upon others, some chance to get ahead Yes life was hard for them, much more hard than for any blo ated millionaire, who still lives on their hard-earned monies. I feel I shall have to be punished for writing this, that the omniscient god is the rich one, cared little for looks, less for Art, still kept weekly films close for the free dishes and scandal hot. Some how though got cheated in health and upon hearth. I am one of them. I am witness not to Whitman’s vision, but instead the poorhouses, the mad city asylums and re- life worklines. Yes, I am witness not to God’s goodness, but his better or less scorn. The First of May, The Commonwealth of State of Massachusetts, 1972

The guest who came in to the street people’s suppers last night, An elderly man with a lost smart little boy’s face and a look As if he might turn against you anytime soon, As if he’d just come into this world and he was extremely Wary about what the world was going to be, and he said, “If I ask you a question will you give me a truthful answer?” And I said, “That depends on what the question is,” Thinking the little elderly boy looked sophisticated and As if he’d in fact been a long time in the world And would get the tone right, and maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t; At any rate he went on to ask the question, “When I come into places like this and there are people holding Coffee cups to their lips and they look at me, Are they about to drink the coffee or not to drink the coffee?” He was balancing the world on the tip of his witty unknowing nose. I felt like I was falling down someplace else than anywhere there.