All of my pain is a spider
I’ve learned not to crush
with the heel of my shoe
but to guide with a page
of my journal
into an empty glass.
I ask questions about
its life, its purpose
as I walk careful
out to the garden and rest
it down on the earth.
My pain—how happy
it is to leave me
whenever I treat it
kind.
I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along a floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through a door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days; a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose fresh-cut and placed within a vase,
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
“Come out, you dogs, and fight!” said I,
And wept there was but once to die.
But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and stay, “The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won—
The difference is small, my son.”
Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.
For years I led a dreary life!
The days passed slowly, one by one;
I fed the ducks, reproved my wife,
Played Handel's Largo on the fife,
Or gave the dog a run.
I neither realised nor knew
The pleasures of a private Zoo.
I never loved a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
Nor ever to my lot it fell
To know a penguin really well,
Till, early last July,
I bought a small menagerie,
And oh! the difference to me!
Now, when my spouse, perverse or cold,
Induces an attack of dumps,
I feel encouraged and consoled
When in their manege I behold
My camels' greater humps;
I fly from dear mama-in-law
To Kate, my talkative macaw.
When statesmen's speeches are disgraced
By vulgar insults which denote
A lamentable lack of taste,
I seek my monkey-house in haste
To find an antidote;
I turn for manners to the lair
Of Bosco, my performing bear.
Those " lions " whom we fête and feed,
Heroes of sword or brush or pen,
Are they more dignified, indeed,
Than creatures of that nobler breed
Which decorate my den?
The more my fellow-men I view,
The more I love my private Zoo!
The sky is open
all the way.
Workers upright on the line
like spokes.
I know there is a river somewhere,
lit, fragrant, golden mist, all that,
whose irrepressible birds
can’t believe their luck this morning
and every morning.
I let them riot
in my mind a few minutes more
before the news comes.
