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BY Leonard
Feeney, S. J. NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1933 To MY FATHER CONTENTS To Our Blessed Lord at
the Pillar THE
GOLD I HAVE GATHERED
The gold I have gathered I mined in my
mind, The beautiful beauty God helped me to
find. The wonderful wonder I hoard in my head, I said I will share it with someone: I
said I will put in a poem an inkling in ink Of the love that I live by, the truth that
I think. And the wealth of my wisdom I thought I
could tell, My hunger for Heaven, my horror of Hell, With some poor little scribbles I make
with a pen. No fancy THAT, ladies and gentlemen! THE DOVE
Learn from a little dove, The Holy Spirit’s symbol, The qualities of love, And what it must resemble. Notice its note will vary At different seasons, — A wild bird, and a wary, For different reasons. When sunlight warms the roof, And moonlight fills the nest, Innocent, soft, aloof, Unruffled and at rest. But when the storm is raging: Clawing, battling, crying; A bird beyond all caging, Furiously flying. I BURNED MY BRIDGES
I burned my bridges when I had crossed. I never brooded on what I lost, Nor ruined with rapine my holocaust. Youth is a rapture we must forget; Wither and wrinkle without regret, Hobble to Heaven and do not fret. Yet in my soul there is something still Deeper than memory, mind and will, Something alive that I cannot kill. Part of me, put not in my keeping, Awakes unwakened
when I am sleeping, Under my laughter it goes on weeping For bye-gone beaches and limbs of brown, When hoops were rolling around the town, And London Bridges were falling down. THE GIFT OF TEARS
Never a rhyme I wrote or read Could ever make me cry; But a little brown fiddle Sawed in the middle Does, and I don’t know why. SPRING CAROL
My little joy, my sweet joy, I wish I could romance it; I wish I had a light foot Deft enough to dance it, Or pictures to portray it, Or syllables to say it, Or wind enough to fill a flute And play it. REFLECTION
When we were young and you were fond Of rolling pebbles in a pond, Remember how we waded out And looked and found without a doubt Our pictures near a silver school Of little fishes in a pool? Though round the world the rivers go And into fussy fountains flow, Our pictures shall remain When waters rest again. The mirror in the well will not Forget us when we are forgot. SMALL FRY
I went fishing for a rhyme In the babble of a brook And a merry little minnow Nibbled at my hook, And here’s the pretty fellow Bouncing in a book. MY WINDOW
I lock my window tight, I bolt it with a bar, Ever since the night One memorable star Came shining through, And made unusually bright My parallelogram of light, My acre in the blue. I cover my window too With a dark curtain So to be certain No one else will try To trespass with his eye On my part of the sky. BRIEF LITANY
Softly out of nowhere Blows a summer breeze, Wrinkling in the sunshine, Trembling in the trees; Swings a little trinket Hanging in the air, Keeps a penny pin-wheel Twirling at a fair; Starts a wee melodeon Pumping in a flea, Stops and drops a lobster A bubble in the sea; Turns into a tremolo, Flows through a fife; Lends a tiny hop-toad A lungful of life; Falters on the hill-top, Tumbles down the glen, Buries in a world Without wind. Amen. SHEEP RITUAL
Oh, you should have seen the miracle I
saw when I was in Wales, Where
myriads of sheep go munching up And
lunching down the dales; And
they graze along the meadow march, And
nibble around the mill, Cross
the bridges over the brook, Bleat
and eat and fill Their
bellies full of blossoms; Then
lie awhile and sleep. Then
slowly up the slope again, And
slowly down the steep, Their
little mouths meandering on, Bit
by bite they pull, Inch
by inch, the sweet grass While
all the beautiful Valleys
of Wye from stream to sky Are
turning into wool. AT THE FIREPLACE
The mulberry logs are covered with flame And lacquered with light they burn. The trick of the blazing mulberry logs In the grate, is my great concern: — How all this essence of fiery juice And fiber and
gnarl and knot Is not transmuted to whistle and multiple Crackle and pistol shot. The mulberry logs, so stiff and tough, Substantial, and hard and round, Astound me, vanishing — save for an ounce Of ash — into so much sound. JOY IN HEAVEN
Jesus clapped His little hands And Mary lit a star When I helped an old lady with bundles Onto a trolley car. MOUSE TRAP
I
never kill a caught mouse Nor drown him in a pail. I
always extricate him And
lift him by the tail, And
carefully release him Into
the hollow wall, Because
I do admire a mouse Who
is not sceptical; Who
keeps his faith in odors That
terminate in cheese, And
will not rob his little nose Of
all its certainties. I
loathe an apprehensive mouse Whose
phobia for traps Reduces
life’s philosophy To
“maybe” and “perhaps”; Who
holds that truth is relative, Who
disbelieves in smell, And
spreads despair in micedom And
turns it into Hell. Give
me a trustful little mouse Who
chisels in and out, And
grinds his way to surety And
chews away a doubt, And
turns my house to splinters To
satisfy his soul, And
breaks his gallant little neck Exploring
in a hole. MOTH MEMORIES
God’s baby dew-moth dancing down the dawn, Flitting from leaf to leaf along the lawn, Squanders its dainty substance in the air And leaves no sweet remembrance anywhere, Save in some moody lady’s elegies Concerning moths, mosquitoes, flies and
fleas, Who pouts in poems, like an owl or pigeon, Her whit-tu-whu
and jug-a-jug religion. THE FIRST DAY OF CREATION
When God tried out His thunderbolts And lightnings
wildly lightened, It frightens me to think there was Nobody to be frightened. PROBLEM
The white invisible angels We clothe in queer disguises, In wings and snowy night-gowns To suit our strange surmises. But how do they see in symbols Of unethereal
air Old Pudgy, our
parish fat man, Puffing his little prayer? THE STREET SPRINKLERS
When whistling teamsters down the hills Their bubbling barrels drive again, Scattering liquid whippoorwills And thrushes from a rolling brush, Our ears become alive again Listening to the luscious noises. Hosannas from the hoses rush And all the air rejoices. POOR TURKEY
The
melancholy turkey cock, Of
every bird the laughing-stock, Stands
bewildered beside the barn Endeavoring to gobble a yard of yarn, And
folds his foliage like a fan, And
pecks at popcorn in a pan, And
wobbles and winks and wonders why, For
all his feathers, he cannot fly, Hysterically
hiccuping A
little song he cannot sing. PRAY FOR ME
Pray for me when I was small, When I was two or three, The night when nobody at all Prayed for me; When nobody knew they left me out And lost me in the snow. God help me when I tried to shout, Long ago. INEVITABLE RENDEZVOUS
Down at Oyster Graveyard Sitting on a quay, One afternoon in April From three till half past three, I felt so much emotion I got the silly notion That God made the ocean From all eternity Exclusively for me. And I’d like to know exactly Did He or didn’t He? SIMPLIFICATION
Lucky for girls nimble with thimbles Poems and plays are lies. Love is as simple and sane as sewing, A problem of hooks and eyes. He had a hole in his Sunday stocking, She with her needle mended it: — That was the wonder of wife and woman, That was the trick that ended it. Lucky for dreamy organ grinders And strolling umbrella menders; Lucky for lonely deep-sea divers And telephone-pole ascenders. THE PIANO TUNER
Do, re, moo! Do, re, meow! Sounds so far Like a cat or a cow. Do, re, miff! Do, re, muff! Guess I haven’t It tight enough. Do, re, measles! Do, re, mumps! Turn it too tight And back it jumps. Do, re, (listen!) Do re, MI! There’s the little bird I head in a tree! BLIND MAN’S POEM
I’ve snapped all my fingers And scratched all my hair. I’m tired of being someplace Sitting in a chair. I think I shall get up now And go to anywhere. THE PRISONER
Monday I whistled a little. Tuesday I whistled a lot. Wednesday I whistled a little. Thursday I have forgot. Friday I whistled a little. But not on Saturday. Sunday I whistled a little; The jailer came in to say: “Hello,” and I whistled a little After he went away. BUZZ,
A BOOK REVIEW
“Therefore the transition from a coloured
shape to the notion of an object which can be used for all sorts of purposes
which have nothing to do with colour, seems a very natural one and we
. . . require careful training if we are to refrain from acting upon
it.” Professor Puffles. Giddily
in the garden The
little bee blows, With
wax on his waistcoat And
treacle on his toes, And
a noise in his nose; Pausing
at a pansy And
reposing on a rose. Gee!
But it must be jolly For
a bee to be a bee, And
to jab a juicy javelin In
a nice anemone That
has objectivity, As
arranged by Aristotle In
his strange philosophy. Merrily
in the meadow This
fuzzy fellow fills His
engine full of honey On
the sunny petal-sills Of
delicious daffodils, With
an illative indifference To
his inferential ills. Really
it must be rapture To
buss about the brink Of
a violet that is valid Or
an a priori pink, Even
though one’s color kink Is
the fruit of careless training In
thinking how to think. FERVERINO IN A FRUIT STORE
Out of nothing God made each, Made a poet, and made a peach. God His nothings could confound, Out of nothings switched around, Make a bard Green and hard; Make a mellow Fruit a fellow. Neither would have known. One would bother With a rhyme, And eat the other Every time. Skin and bone, Or skin and stone: — Praised be God,
and God alone. THE ORGAN BLOWER
That Mary, the Mother Of Jesus may Have a lovely hymn On her festive day, — That God Almighty May be adored With tuneful treble And bass and chord, — That music may mingle With light and flower On the hot June nights At the Holy Hour, — Humphry, the loon, By the dusty rafter, Sweats like an ox, And he says, “I haf
ter Buy new galluses The mornin’
after!” ASPIRATION
Perched upon the gable Above his lonely stable (And this is not a fable), A donkey saw a dove, With whom he fell in love. Oh what was he thinking of! And its soft tickitacooing Almost to his undoing His wild heart went pursuing. But a stout rope forefended What nature never intended And his white dream-flight ended. This poem — breathe no word of it, Nor bard, nor beast, nor bird of it: — As though you never heard of it. THE MILKMAN
When the one o’clock cock begins to crow They drag him out of a dream, And he stares at the stars in the Milky
Way And the meteors made of cream. When the sky is a meadow of molten oats Sickled with flaming steel, He hitches his horse to a cart of cans With a squeak in its wheezy wheel, And under the twinkle of sundry suns And miscellaneous moons, His rattling bottles in sleepy lanes Tinkle their lonely tunes. A MUNSTER MEMORY
All I recall (God help us all!) Is a witless old woman With shoes and a shawl Who didn’t know when She had counted to ten In counting her nine Baby chicks and a hen And went crawling behind In the bushes to find The little one lost In a hole in her mind. NIGHTLY OUTRAGE
They draw the curtains, And lock the door; They keep it dark From ten till four At Small and Small’s Department Store, While lackadaisical Elsie Scrubs the floor. Her dress is dirty, Her knees are sore, Pushing her pail From ten till four. I think it’s small |