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Depression Poems

Found 16 poems in the topic of Depression .
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For Catherine: Juana, Infanta of Navarre
"Ferdinand was systematic when
he drove his daughter mad.

With a Casanova's careful art,
he moved slowly,
stole only one child at a time
through tunnels specially dug
behind the walls of her royal
chamber, then paid the Duenna
well to remember nothing
but his appreciation.

Imagine how quietly
the servants must have worked,

loosening the dirt, the muffled
ring of pick-ends against
the castle stone. The Duenna,
one eye gauging the drugged girl's
sleep, each night handing over
another light parcel, another
small body vanished
through the mouth of a hole.

Once you were a daughter, too,
then a wife and now the mother
of a baby with a Spanish name.

Paloma, you call her, little dove;
she sleeps in a room beyond you.

Your husband, too, works late,
drinks too much at night, comes
home lit, wanting sex and dinner.
You feign sleep, shrunk
in the corner of the queen-sized bed.

You've confessed, you can't feel things
when they touch you;

take Prozac for depression, Ativan
for the buzz. Drunk, you call your father
who doesn't want to claim
a ha!fsand-niggergrandkid.
He says he never loved your mother.

No one remembers Juana; almost
everything's forgotten in time,

and if I tell her story,
it's only when guessing
what she loved, what she dreamed
about, the lost details of a life
that barely survives history.

God and Latin, I suppose, what she loved.
And dreams of mice pouring out
from a hole. The Duenna, in spite
of her black, widow's veil, leaning
to kiss her, saying Juana, don't listen..."
Erin Belieu
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Depression
.
Mary
"The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother's firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors' acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street car--
First books of the Aeneid known by heart,
French, and the French Club Wednesday afternoon;
Then summer replacement typist in an office,
Her sister's family moving in with them,
Depression years and she the only earner.
Saturday, football game and opera broadcasts,
Sunday, staying at home to wash her hair,
The Business Women's Circle Monday night,
And, for a treat, birthdays and holidays,
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald.
The young blond sister long since gone to college,
Nephew and nieces gone, her mother dead,
Instead of Caesar, having to teach First Aid,
The students rowdy, she retired. The rent
For the empty rooms she gave to Thornwell Orphanage,
Unwed Mothers, Temperance, and Foster Parents
And never bought the car she meant to buy;
Too blind at last to do much more than sit
All day in the antique glider on the porch
Listening to cars pass up and down the street.
Each summer, on the grass behind the house--
Cape jasmine, with its scent of August nights
Humid and warm, the soft magnolia bloom
Marked lightly by a slow brown stain--she spread,
For airing, the same small intense collection,
Concert programs, worn trophies, years of yearbooks,
Letters from schoolgirl chums, bracelets of hair
And the same picture: black hair in a bun,
Puzzled eyes in an oval face as young
Or old as innocence, skirt to the ground,
And, seated on the high school steps, the class,
The ones to whom she would have said, "Seigneur,
Donnez-nous la force de supporter
La peine," as an example easy to remember,
Formal imperative, object first person plural."
Edgar Bowers
Depression Football
.
Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America
"THE PUDDING MASTER OF



STANLEY BASIN





Tree, snow and rock beginnings, the mountain in back of the

lake promised us eternity, but the lake itself was filled with

thousands of silly minnows, swimming close to the shore

and busy putting in hours of Mack Sennett time.

The minnows were an Idaho tourist attraction. They

should have been made into a National Monument. Swimming

close to shore, like children they believed in their own im-

mortality .

A third-year student in engineering at the University of

Montana attempted to catch some of the minnows but he went

about it all wrong. So did the children who came on the

Fourth of July weekend.

The children waded out into the lake and tried to catch the

minnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons and

plastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of human

effort. Their total catch was one minnow. It jumped out of a

can full of water on their table and died under the table, gasp-

ing for watery breath while their mother fried eggs on the

Coleman stove.

The mother apologized. She was supposed to be watching

the fish --THIS IS MY EARTHLY FAILURE-- holding the

dead fish by the tail, the fish taking all the bows like a young

Jewish comedian talking about Adlai Stevenson.

The third-year student in engineering at the University of

Montana took a tin can and punched an elaborate design of

holes in the can, the design running around and around in

circles, like a dog with a fire hydrant in its mouth. Then he

attached some string to the can and put a huge salmon egg

and a piece of Swiss cheese in the can. After two hours of

intimate and universal failure he went back to Missoula,

Montana.

The woman who travels with me discovered the best way

to catch the minnows. She used a large pan that had in its

bottom the dregs of a distant vanilla pudding. She put the

pan in the shallow water along the shore and instantly, hun-

dreds of minnows gathered around. Then, mesmerized by

the vanilla pudding, they swam like a children's crusade

into the pan. She caught twenty fish with one dip. She put

the pan full of fish on the shore and the baby played with

the fish for an hour.

We watched the baby to make sure she was just leaning

on them a little. We didn't want her to kill any of them be-

cause she was too young.

Instead of making her furry sound, she adapted rapidly

to the difference between animals and fish, and was soon

making a silver sound.

She caught one of the fish with her hand and looked at it

for a while. We took the fish out of her hand and put it back

into the pan. After a while she was putting the fish back by

herself.

Then she grew tired of this. She tipped the pan over and

a dozen fish flopped out onto the shore. The children's game

and the banker's game, she picked up those silver things,

one at a time, and put them back in the pan. There was still

a little water in it. The fish liked this. You could tell.

When she got tired of the fish, we put them back in the

lake, and they were all quite alive, but nervous. I doubt if

they will ever want vanilla pudding again.










ROOM 208, HOTEL

TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA



Half a block from Broadway and Columbus is Hotel Trout

Fishing in America, a cheap hotel. It is very old and run by

some Chinese. They are young and ambitious Chinese and

the lobby is filled with the smell of Lysol.

The Lysol sits like another guest on the stuffed furniture

reading a copy of the Chronicle, the Sports Section. It is the

only furniture I have ever seen in my life that looks like baby

food.

And the Lysol sits asleep next to an old Italian pensioner

who listens to the heavy ticking of the clock and dreams of

eternity's golden pasta, sweet basil and Jesus Christ.

The Chinese are always doing something to the hotel. One

week they paint a lower banister and the next week they put

some new wallpaper on part of the third floor.

No matter how many times you pass that part of the third

floor, you cannot remember the color of the wallpaper or

what the design is. All you know is that part of the wallpaper

is new. It is different from the old wallpaper. But you can-

not remember what that looks like either.

One day the Chinese take a bed out of a room and lean it

up against the wall. It stays there for a month. You get used

to seeing it and then you go by one day and it is gone. You

wonder where it went.

I remember the first time I went inside Hotel Trout Fish-

ing in America. It was with a friend to meet some people.

"I'11 tell you what's happening, " he said. "She's an ex-

hustler who works for the telephone company. He went to

medical school for a while during the Great Depression and

then he went into show business. After that, he was an errand

boy for an abortion mill in Los Angeles. He took a fall and

did some time in San Quentin.

"I think you'll like them. They're good people.

"He met her a couple of years ago in North Beach. She

was hustling for a spade pimp. It's kind of weird. Most

women have the temperament to be a whore, but she's one

of these rare women who just don't have it--the whore tem-

perament. She's Negro, too.

"She was a teenage girl living on a farm in Oklahoma. The

pimp drove by one afternoon and saw her playing in the front

yard. He stopped his car and got out and talked to her father

for a while.

"I guess he gave her father some money. He came up

with something good because her father told her to go and

get her things. So she went with the pimp. Simple as that.

"He took her to San Francisco and turned her out and she

hated it. He kept her in line by terrorizing her all the time.

He was a real sweetheart.

"She had some brains, so he got her a job with the tele-

phone company during the day, and he had her hustling at

night.

"When Art took her away from him, he got pretty mad. A

good thing and all that. He used to break into Art's hotel

room in the middle of the night and put a switchblade to Art's

throat and rant and rave. Art kept putting bigger and bigger

locks on the door, but the pimp just kept breaking in--a huge

fellow.

"So Art went out and got a .32 pistol, and the next time

the pimp broke in, Art pulled the gun out from underneath

the covers and jammed it into the pimp's mouth and said,

'You'll be out of luck the next time you come through that

door, Jack.' This broke the pimp up. He never went back.

The pimp certainly lost a good thing.

"He ran up a couple thousand dollars worth of bills in her

name, charge accounts and the like. They're still paying

them off.

"The pistol's right there beside the bed, just in case the

pimp has an attack of amnesia and wants to have his shoes

shined in a funeral parlor.

"When we go up there, he'll drink the wine. She won't.

She'Il'have a little bottle of brandy. She won't offer us any

of it. She drinks about four of them a day. Never buys a fifth.

She always keeps going out and getting another half-pint.

"That's the way she handles it. She doesn't talk very much,

and she doesn't make any bad scenes. A good-looking woman, r

My friend knocked on the door and we could hear some-

body get up off the bed and come to the door.

"Who's there?" said a man on the other side.

"Me," my friend said, in a voice deep and recognizable

as any name.

"I'11 open the door. " A simple declarative sentence. He

undid about a hundred locks, bolts and chains and anchors

and steel spikes and canes filled with acid, and then the

door opened like the classroom of a great university and

everything was in its proper place: the gun beside the bed

and a small bottle of brandy beside an attractive Negro woman,

There were many flowers and plants growing in the room,

some of them were on the dresser, surrounded by old photo-

graphs. All of the photographs were of white people, includ-

ing Art when he was young and handsome and looked just like

the 1930s.

There were pictures of animals cut out of magazines and

tacked to the wall, with crayola frames drawn around them

and crayola picture wires drawn holding them to the wall.

They were pictures of kittens and puppies. They looked just

fine .

There was a bowl of goldfish next to the bed, next to the

gun. How religious and intimate the goldfish and the gun

looked together.

They had a cat named 208. They covered the bathroom

floor with newspaper and the cat crapped on the newspaper.

My friend said that 208 thought he was the only cat left in the

world, not having seen another cat since he was a tiny kitten.

They never let him out of the room. He was a red cat and

very aggressive. When you played with that cat, he really

bit you. Stroke 208's fur and he'd try to disembowel your

hand as if it were a belly stuffed full of extra soft intestines.

We sat there and drank and talked about books. Art had

owned a lot of books in Los Angeles, but they were all gone

now. He told us that he used to spend his spare time in sec-

ondhand bookstores buying old and unusual books when he

was in show business, traveling from city to city across

America. Some of them were very rare autographed books,

he told us, but he had bought them for very little and was

forced to sell them for very little.

They'd be worth a lot of money now, " he said.

The Negro woman sat there very quietly studying her

brandy. A couple of times she said yes, in a sort of nice

way. She used the word yes to its best advantage, when sur-

rounded by no meaning and left alone from other words.

They did their own cooking in the room and had a single

hot plate sitting on the floor, next to half a dozen plants, in-

cluding a peach tree growing in a coffee can. Their closet

was stuffed with food. Along with shirts, suits and dresses,

were canned goods, eggs and cooking oil.

My friend told me that she was a very fine cook. That

she could really cook up a good meal, fancy dishes, too, on

that single hot plate, next to the peach tree.

They had a good world going for them. He had such a soft

voice and manner that he worked as a private nurse for rich

mental patients. He made good money when he worked, but

sometimes he was sick himself. He was kind of run down.

She was still working for the telephone company, but she

wasn't doing that night work any more.

They were still paying off the bills that pimp had run up.

I mean, years had passed and they were still paying them

off: a Cadillac and a hi-fi set and expensive clothes and all

those things that Negro pimps do love to have.

Z went back there half a dozen times after that first meet-

ing. An interesting thing happened. I pretended that the cat,

208, was named after their room number, though I knew that

their number was in the three hundreds. The room was on

the third floor. It was that simple.

I always went to their room following the geography of

Hotel Trout Fishing in America, rather than its numerical

layout. I never knew what the exact number of their room

was. I knew secretly it was in the three hundreds and that

was all.

Anyway, it was easier for me to establish order in my

mind by pretending that the cat was named after their room

number. It seemed like a good idea and the logical reason

for a cat to have the name 208. It, of course, was not true.

It was a fib. The cat's name was 208 and the room number

was in the three hundreds.

Where did the name 208 come from? What did it mean? I

thought about it for a while, hiding it from the rest of my

mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about

it too hard.

A year later I found out the true significance of 208's

name, purely by accident. My telephone rang one Saturday

morning when the sun was shining on the hills. It was a

close friend of mine and he said, "I'm in the slammer. Come

and get me out. They're burning black candles around the

drunk tank. "

I went down to the Hall of Justice to bail my friend out,

and discovered that 208 is the room number of the bail office,

It was very simple. I paid ten dollars for my friend's life

and found the original meaning of 208, how it runs like melt-

ing snow all the way down the mountainside to a small cat

living and playing in Hotel Trout Fishing in America, believ-

ing itself to be the last cat in the world, not having seen

another cat in such a long time, totally unafraid, newspaper

spread out all over the bathroom floor, and something good

cooking on the hot plate.









THE SURGEON





I watched my day begin on Little Redfish Lake as clearly as

the first light of dawn or the first ray of the sunrise, though

the dawn and the sunrise had long since passed and it was

now late in the morning.

The surgeon took a knife from the sheath at his belt and

cut the throat of the chub with a very gentle motion, showing

poetically how sharp the knife was, and then he heaved the

fish back out into the lake.

The chub made an awkward dead splash and obeyed allthe

traffic laws of this world SCHOOL ZONE SPEED 25 MILES

and sank to the cold bottom of the lake. It lay there white

belly up like a school bus covered with snow. A trout swam

over and took a look, just putting in time, and swam away.

The surgeon and I were talking about the AMA. I don't

know how in the hell we got on the thing, but we were on it.

Then he wiped the knife off and put it back in the sheath. I

actually don't know how we got on the AMA.

The surgeon said that he had spent twenty-five years be-

coming a doctor. His studies had been interrupted by the

Depression and two wars. He told me that he would give up

the practice of medicine if it became socialized in America.

"I've never turned away a patient in my life, and I've

never known another doctor who has. Last year I wrote off

six thousand dollars worth of bad debts, " he said.

I was going to say that a sick person should never under

any conditions be abad debt, but I decided to forget it. Noth-

ing was going to be proved or changed on the shores of Little

Redfish Lake, and as that chub had discovered, it was not a

good place to have cosmetic surgery done.

"I worked three years ago for a union in Southern Utah

that had a health plan, " the surgeon said. "I would not care

to practice medicine under such conditions. The patients

think they own you and your time. They think you're their

own personal garbage can.

"I'd be home eating dinner and the telephone would ring,

'Help ! Doctor ! I'm dying! It's my stomach ! I've got horrible

pains !' I would get up from my dinner and rush over there.

"The guy would meet me at the door with a can of beer in

his hand. 'Hi, dec, come on in. I'11 get you a beer. I'm

watching TV. The pain is all gone. Great, huh? I feel like a

million. Sit down. I'11 get you a beer, dec. The Ed Sullivan

Show's on.'

"No thank you, " the surgeon said. "I wouldn't care to

practice medicine under such conditions. No thank you. No

thanks .

"I like to hunt and I like to fish, " he said. "That's why I

moved to Twin Falls. I'd heard so much about Idaho hunting

and fishing. I've been very disappointed. I've given up my

practice, sold my home in Twin, and now I'm looking for a

new place to settle down.

"I've written to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexi-

co, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington for

their hunting and fishing regulations, and I'm studying them

all, " he said.

"I've got enough money to travel around for six months,

looking for a place to settle down where the hunting and fish-

ing is good. I'11 get twelve hundred dollars back in income

tax returns by not working any more this year. That's two

hundred a month for not working. I don't understand this

country, " he said.

The surgeon's wife and children were in a trailer nearby.

The trailer had come in the night before, pulled by a brand-

new Rambler station wagon. He had two children, a boy two-

and-a-half years old and the other, an infant born premature-

ly, but now almost up to normal weight.

The surgeon told me that they'd come over from camping

on Big Lost River where he had caught a fourteen-inch brook

trout. He was young looking, though he did not have much

hair on his head.

I talked to the surgeon for a little while longer and said

good-bye. We were leaving in the afternoon for Lake Josephus

located at the edge of the Idaho Wilderness, and he was leav-

ing for America, often only a place in the mind.









A NOTE ON THE CAMPING



CRAZE THAT IS CURRENTLY



SWEEPING AMERICA



As much as anything else, the Coleman lantern is the sym-

bol of the camping craze that is currently sweeping America,

with its unholy white light burning in the forests of America.

Last summer, a Mr. Norris was drinking at a bar in San

Francisco. It was Sunday night and he'd had six or seven.

Turning to the guy on the next stool, he said, "What are you

up to?"

"Just having a few, " the guy said.

"That's what I'm doing, " Mr. Norris said. "I like it. "

"I know what you mean, " the guy said. "I had to lay off

for a couple years. I'm just starting up again. "

"What was wrong?" Mr. Norris said.

"I had a hole in my liver, " the guy said.

"In your liver?"

"Yeah, the doctor said it was big enough to wave a flag

in. It's better now. I can have a couple once in a while. I'm

not supposed to, but it won't kill me. "

"Well, I'm thirty-two years old, " Mr. Norris said. "I've

had three wives and I can't remember the names of my child-

ren. "

The guy on the next stool, like a bird on the next island,

took a sip from his Scotch and soda. The guy liked the sound

of the alcohol in his drink. He put the glass back on the bar.

"That's no problem, " he said to Mr. Norris. "The best

thing I know for remembering the names of children from

previous marriages, is to go out camping, try a little trout

fishing. Trout fishing is one of the best things in the world

for remembering children's names."

"Is that right?" Mr. Norris said.

"Yeah, " the guy said.

"That sounds like an idea, " Mr. Norris said. "I've got to

do something. Sometimes I think one of them is named Carl,

but that's impossible. My third-ex hated the name Carl. "

"You try some camping and that trout fishing, " the guy

on the next stool said. "And you'll remember the names of

Your unborn children. "

"Carl! Carl! Your mother wants you!" Mr. Norris yelled

as a kind of joke, then he realized that it wasn't very funny.

He was getting there.

He'd have a couple more and then his head would always

fall forward and hit the bar like a gunshot. He'd always miss

his glass, so he wouldn't cut his face. His head would always

jump up and look startled around the bar, people staring at

it. He'd get up then, and take it home.

The next morning Mr. Norris went down to a sporting

goods store and charged his equipment. He charged a 9 x 9

foot dry finish tent with an aluminum center pole. Then he

charged an Arctic sleeping bag filled with eiderdown and an

air mattress and an air pillow to go with the sleeping bag.

He also charged an air alarm clock to go along with the idea

of night and waking in the morning.

He charged a two-burner Coleman stove and a Coleman

lantern and a folding aluminum table and a big set of inter-

locking aluminum cookware and a portable ice box.

The last things he charged were his fishing tackle and a

bottle of insect repellent.

He left the next day for the mountains.

Hours later, when he arrived in the mountains, the first

sixteen campgrounds he stopped at were filled with people.

He was a little surprised. He had no idea the mountains

would be so crowded.

At the seventeenth campground, a man had just died of a

heart attack and the ambulance attendants were taking down

his tent. They lowered the center pole and then pulled up the

corner stakes. They folded the tent neatly and put it in the

back of the ambulance, right beside the man's body.

They drove off down the road, leaving behind them in the

air, a cloud of brilliant white dust. The dust looked like the

light from a Coleman lantern.

Mr. Norris pitched his tent right there and set up all his

equipment and soon had it all going at once. After he finished

eating a dehydrated beef Stroganoff dinner, he turned off all

his equipment with the master air switch and went to sleep,

for it was now dark.

It was about midnight when they brought the body and

placed it beside the tent, less than a foot away from where

Mr. Norris was sleeping in his Arctic sleeping bag.

He was awakened when they brought the body. They weren't

exactly the quietest body bringers in the world. Mr. Norris

could see the bulge of the body against the side of the tent.

The only thing that separated him from the dead body was a

thin layer of 6 oz. water resistant and mildew resistant DRY

FINISH green AMERIFLEX poplin.

Mr. Norris un-zipped his sleeping bag and went outside

with a gigantic hound-like flashlight. He saw the body bring-

ers walking down the path toward the creek.

"Hey, you guys !" Mr. Norris shouted. "Come back here.

You forgot something. "

"What do you mean?" one of them said. They both looked

very sheepish, caught in the teeth of the flashlight.

"You know what I mean," Mr. Norris said. "Right now!"

The body bringers shrugged their shoulders, looked at

each other and then reluctantly went back, dragging their

feet like children all the way. They picked up the body. It

was heavy and one of them had trouble getting hold of the feet.

That one said, kind of hopelessly to Mr. Norris, "You

won't change your mind?"

"Goodnight and good-bye, " Mr. Norris said.

They went off down the path toward the creek, carrying

the body between them. Mr. Norris turned his flashlight off

and he could hear them, stumbling over the rocks along the

bank of the creek. He could hear them swearing at each other.

He heard one of them say, "Hold your end up.'' Then he

couldn't hear anything.

About ten minutes later he saw all sorts of lights go on at

another campsite down along the creek. He heard a distant

voice shouting, "The answer is no ! You already woke up the

kids. They have to have their rest. We're going on a four-

mile hike tomorrow up to Fish Konk Lake. Try someplace

else. ""
Richard Brautigan
Depression
.
We Ain't Got No Money, Honey, But We Got Rain
"call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the rain came down THICK and
MEAN and
STEADY
and you HEARD it banging against
the roofs and into the ground
waterfalls of it came down
from roofs
and there was HAIL
big ROCKS OF ICE
bombing
exploding smashing into things
and the rain
just wouldn't
STOP
and all the roofs leaked-
dishpans,
cooking pots
were placed all about;
they dripped loudly
and had to be emptied
again and
again.
the rain came up over the street curbings,
across the lawns, climbed up the steps and
entered the houses.
there were mops and bathroom towels,
and the rain often came up through the
toilets:bubbling, brown, crazy,whirling,
and all the old cars stood in the streets,
cars that had problems starting on a
sunny day,
and the jobless men stood
looking out the windows
at the old machines dying
like living things out there.
the jobless men,
failures in a failing time
were imprisoned in their houses with their
wives and children
and their
pets.
the pets refused to go out
and left their waste in
strange places.
the jobless men went mad
confined with
their once beautiful wives.
there were terrible arguments
as notices of foreclosure
fell into the mailbox.
rain and hail, cans of beans,
bread without butter;fried
eggs, boiled eggs, poached
eggs; peanut butter
sandwiches, and an invisible
chicken in every pot.
my father, never a good man
at best, beat my mother
when it rained
as I threw myself
between them,
the legs, the knees, the
screams
until they
seperated.
"I'll kill you," I screamed
at him. "You hit her again
and I'll kill you!"
"Get that son-of-a-bitching
kid out of here!"
"no, Henry, you stay with
your mother!"
all the households were under
seige but I believe that ours
held more terror than the
average.
and at night
as we attempted to sleep
the rains still came down
and it was in bed
in the dark
watching the moon against
the scarred window
so bravely
holding out
most of the rain,
I thought of Noah and the
Ark
and I thought, it has come
again.
we all thought
that.
and then, at once, it would
stop.
and it always seemed to
stop
around 5 or 6 a.m.,
peaceful then,
but not an exact silence
because things continued to
drip
drip
drip


and there was no smog then
and by 8 a.m.
there was a
blazing yellow sunlight,
Van Gogh yellow-
crazy, blinding!
and then
the roof drains
relieved of the rush of
water
began to expand in the warmth:
PANG!PANG!PANG!
and everybody got up and looked outside
and there were all the lawns
still soaked
greener than green will ever
be
and there were birds
on the lawn
CHIRPING like mad,
they hadn't eaten decently
for 7 days and 7 nights
and they were weary of
berries
and
they waited as the worms
rose to the top,
half drowned worms.
the birds plucked them
up
and gobbled them
down;there were
blackbirds and sparrows.
the blackbirds tried to
drive the sparrows off
but the sparrows,
maddened with hunger,
smaller and quicker,
got their
due.
the men stood on their porches
smoking cigarettes,
now knowing
they'd have to go out
there
to look for that job
that probably wasn't
there, to start that car
that probably wouldn't
start.
and the once beautiful
wives
stood in their bathrooms
combing their hair,
applying makeup,
trying to put their world back
together again,
trying to forget that
awful sadness that
gripped them,
wondering what they could
fix for
breakfast.
and on the radio
we were told that
school was now
open.
and
soon
there I was
on the way to school,
massive puddles in the
street,
the sun like a new
world,
my parents back in that
house,
I arrived at my classroom
on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, "we won't have our
usual recess, the grounds
are too wet."
"AW!" most of the boys
went.
"but we are going to do
something special at
recess," she went on,
"and it will be
fun!"
well, we all wondered
what that would
be
and the two hour wait
seemed a long time
as Mrs.Sorenson
went about
teaching her
lessons.
I looked at the little
girls, they looked so
pretty and clean and
alert,
they sat still and
straight
and their hair was
beautiful
in the California
sunshine.
the the recess bells rang
and we all waited for the
fun.
then Mrs. Sorenson told us:
"now, what we are going to
do is we are going to tell
each other what we did
during the rainstorm!
we'll begin in the front row
and go right around!
now, Michael, you're first!. . ."
well, we all began to tell
our stories, Michael began
and it went on and on,
and soon we realized that
we were all lying, not
exactly lying but mostly
lying and some of the boys
began to snicker and some
of the girls began to give
them dirty looks and
Mrs.Sorenson said,
"all right! I demand a
modicum of silence
here!
I am interested in what
you did
during the rainstorm
even if you
aren't!"
so we had to tell our
stories and they were
stories.
one girl said that
when the rainbow first
came
she saw God's face
at the end of it.
only she didn't say which end.
one boy said he stuck
his fishing pole
out the window
and caught a little
fish
and fed it to his
cat.
almost everybody told
a lie.
the truth was just
too awful and
embarassing to tell.
then the bell rang
and recess was
over.
"thank you," said Mrs.
Sorenson, "that was very
nice.
and tomorrow the grounds
will be dry
and we will put them
to use
again."
most of the boys
cheered
and the little girls
sat very straight and
still,
looking so pretty and
clean and
alert,
their hair beautiful in a sunshine that
the world might never see
again.
and"
Charles Bukowski
Depression
.
Travels With John Hunter
"We who travel between worlds
lose our muscle and bone.
I was wheeling a barrow of earth
when agony bayoneted me.

I could not sit, or lie down,
or stand, in Casualty.
Stomach-ca"
Les Murray
Depression
.
Pantoum Of The Great Depression
"Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.

We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don't remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.

There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.

At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.

It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.

We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the actual world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.

And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.

But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.

And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry."
Donald Justice
Depression
.
Walt Whitman.
"1
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes--the shelves are crowded with
perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume--it has no taste of the distillation--it
is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever--I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

2
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood
and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice, words loos'd to the eddies
of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and
hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and
meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth
much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun--(there are millions of suns
left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the
eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the
end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance--always substance and increase,
always sex;
Always a knit of identity--always distinction--always a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail--learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is
so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in
the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery, here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my Soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age;
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am
silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean;
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar
than the rest.

I am satisfied--I see, dance, laugh, sing:
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and
withdraws at the peep of the day, with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels, swelling the house with their
plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is
ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me;
People I meet--the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I
live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack of
money, or depressions or exaltations;
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful
events;
These come to me days and nights, and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am;
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary;
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come next;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and
contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments--I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you, my Soul--the other I am must not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass--loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want--not custom or lecture, not even the
best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning;
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my
bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.


Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the
argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own;
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters
and lovers;
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap'd stones, elder, mullen and
poke-weed.

6
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.


Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and
remark, and say, Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the
same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon
out of their mothers' laps;
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers;
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of
their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to
arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward--nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not
contain'd between my hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good;
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth;
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as
myself;
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own--for me mine, male and female;
For me those that have been boys, and that love women;
For me the man that is proud, and feels how it stings to be slighted;
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid--for me mothers, and the mothers of
mothers;
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears;
For me children, and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded;
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no;
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle;
I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my
hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill;
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bed-room;
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair--I note where the pistol has
fallen.

The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the
promenaders;
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the
shod horses on the granite floor;
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs;
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside, borne to the hospital;
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall;
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star, quickly working his passage to
the centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes;
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sun-struck, or in fits;
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to
babes;
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here--what howls
restrain'd by decorum;
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections
with convex lips;
I mind them or the show or resonance of them--I come, and I depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon;
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged;
The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.

I am there--I help--I came stretch'd atop of the load;
I felt its soft jolts--one leg reclined on the other;
I jump from the cross-beams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt,
Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee;
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game;
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves, with my dog and gun by my side.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails--she cuts the sparkle and scud;
My eyes settle the land--I bend at her prow, or shout joyously from the
deck.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me;
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots, and went and had a good time:
(You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.)

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west--the bride
was a red girl;
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking--they
had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper--he was drest mostly in skins--his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck--he held his bride by the hand;

She had long eyelashes--her head was bare--her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside;
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile;
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water, and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and bruis'd
feet,
And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and gave him some coarse
clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd north;
(I had him sit next me at table--my fire-lock lean'd in the corner.)

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore;
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly:
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank;
She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you;
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather;
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long
hair:
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies;
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs--their white bellies bulge to the
sun--they do not ask who seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
in the market;
I loiter, enjoying his repartee, and his shuffle and break-down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil;
Each has his main-sledge--they are all out--(there is a great heat in
the fire.)

From the cinder-strew'd threshold I follow their movements;
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms;
Over-hand the hammers swing--over-hand so slow--over-hand so sure:
They do not hasten--each man hits in his place.

13
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses--the block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain;
The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard--steady and tall he stands,
pois'd on one leg on the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band;

His glance is calm and commanding--he tosses the slouch of his hat away from
his forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache--falls on the black of his
polish'd and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant, and love him--and I do not stop there;
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving--backward as well as forward
slueing;
To niches aside and junior bending.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy shade! what is that
you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on my distant and day-long ramble;

They rise together--they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else;
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me;
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night;
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close;
I find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.)

The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the
chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread wings;
I see in them and myself the same old law.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections;
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamour'd of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders of axes and mauls, and
the drivers of horses;
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me;
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns;
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me;
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will;
Scattering it freely forever.

15
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft;
The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles its
wild ascending lisp;
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner;
The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm;
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready;
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches;
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar;
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel;
The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-day loafe, and looks at the
oats and rye;
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand--the drunkard nods by the
bar-room stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat--the
gate-keeper marks who pass;
The young fellow drives the express-wagon--(I love him, though I do not know
him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race;
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their rifles,
some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee;
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his
saddle;
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the
dancers bow to each other;
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret, and harks to the musical
rain;
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron;
The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth, is offering moccasins and
bead-bags for sale;
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent
sideways;
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the
shore-going passengers;
The young sister holds out the skein, while the elder sister winds it off in a
ball, and stops now and then for the knots;
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, having a week ago borne her first
child;
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine, or in the
factory or mill;
The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and
pains are advancing;
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer--the reporter's lead
flies swiftly over the note-book--the sign-painter is lettering with red and
gold;
The canal boy trots on the tow-path--the book-keeper counts at his
desk--the shoemaker waxes his thread;
The conductor beats time for the band, and all the performers follow him;
The child is baptized--the convert is making his first professions;
The regatta is spread on the bay--the race is begun--how the white sails
sparkle!
The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that would stray;
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the
odd cent;)
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype;
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly;
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips;
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled
neck;
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other;
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;)
The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded by the Great
Secretaries;
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms;
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold;
T"
Walt Whitman
Depression Hate Inspirational Life Poems about Life Suicide
.
On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane
"Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane's
been drinking and has no idea who
this curious Andalusian is, unable
even to speak the language of poetry.
The young man who brought them
together knows both Spanish and English,
but he has a headache from jumping
back and forth from one language
to another. For a moment's relief
he goes to the window to look
down on the East River, darkening
below as the early light comes on.
Something flashes across his sight,
a double vision of such horror
he has to slap both his hands across
his mouth to keep from screaming.
Let's not be frivolous, let's
not pretend the two poets gave
each other wisdom or love or
even a good time, let's not
invent a dialogue of such eloquence
that even the ants in your own
house won't forget it. The two
greatest poetic geniuses alive
meet, and what happens? A vision
comes to an ordinary man staring
at a filthy river. Have you ever
had a vision? Have you ever shaken
your head to pieces and jerked back
at the image of your young son
falling through open space, not
from the stern of a ship bound
from Vera Cruz to New York but from
the roof of the building he works on?
Have you risen from bed to pace
until dawn to beg a merciless God
to take these pictures away? Oh, yes,
let's bless the imagination. It gives
us the myths we live by. Let's bless
the visionary power of the human--
the only animal that's got it--,
bless the exact image of your father
dead and mine dead, bless the images
that stalk the corners of our sight
and will not let go. The young man
was my cousin, Arthur Lieberman,
then a language student at Columbia,
who told me all this before he died
quietly in his sleep in 1983
in a hotel in Perugia. A good man,
Arthur, he survived graduate school,
later came home to Detroit and sold
pianos right through the Depression.
He loaned my brother a used one
to compose his hideous songs on,
which Arthur thought were genius.
What an imagination Arthur had!"
Philip Levine
Depression
.
Vienna, December 1999
"I watched
the winter light die from the bridge,
the sky a sinking empire's battleship,
ice floes' jagged edges
clink their cold toast
to a stilled Danube.

Johann Strauss
would have committed
himself to Wagnerian depression
on a night just like this;
streetlights sputter
matchstick desperation
relinquishing desperate light,
shadow-glaciers crawl
the alleys in deafness:
Beethoven's lament -
Vienna chilled in encroachment
of a Russian winter.

I stand, stiff gloves on cold iron,
snowdrifts slither the streets,
ghosts coalesce
in the city's soot,
strangers' stares
shuffling into the
snow-muffled distance,
disappearance achieved.
Day dies like the century,
like the empire
once taught to the teachers' teachers
in their youth.

I couldn't find
my old friends here,
their dimly remembered faces
didn't match
the lifelessness of their eyes
or their stooped forms,
and in darkness
that reminds
of my father's black uniform,
hopes of memories fail, anyway.

A stranger, returned,
my winged feet trail rubble
of the Ringstrasse and the Hofburg,
Emporer Franz Josef's ghost evicted,
the righteous flight
of angels on cathedral ceilings
forcibly interrupted
by the harsh flight of metal,
our century's reconcilement
of God and brutality
leaving too little.

My grandfather repainted
the frescoes after the war,
the nation's decade-long scaffolds
are history too now.
I imagine his hand
must have shivered like mine,
painting on cold nights like this.

(2001)"
Jonathan Bohrn
Depression
.
INFAMOUS POET
"I never did fit in - at six or sixty one -

I stand out in a crowd, too young or old

And gather pity like a shroud. "Is that real silk?"

A teenager inquired. "As real as Oxfam ever is

For one pound fifty.""
Barry Tebb
Depression
.
FOR JAMES SIMMONS
"Sitting in outpatients

With my own minor ills

Dawn's depression lifts

To the lilt of amitryptilene,

A double dose for a day's journey

To a distant ward.



The word was out that Simmons

Had died eighteen months after

An aneurism at sixty seven.



The meeting he proposed in his second letter

Could never happen: a few days later

A Christmas card in Gaelic - Nollaig Shona -

Then silence, an unbearable chasm

Of wondering if I'd inadvertently offended.



A year later a second card explained the silence:

I joined the queue of mourners:

It was August when I saw the Guardian obituary

Behind glass in the Poetry Library.



How astonishing the colour photo,

The mane of white hair,

The proud mien, the wry smile,

Perfect for a bust by Epstein

Or Gaudier Brjeska a century earlier.



I stood by the shelves

Leafing through your books

With their worn covers,

Remarking the paucity

Of recent borrowings

And the ommisions

From the anthologies.

"I'm a bit out of fashion

But still bringing out books

Armitage didn't put me in at all

The egregarious Silkin

Tried to get off with my wife -

May he rest in peace.





I can't remember what angered me

About Geoffrey Hill, quite funny

In a nervous, melancholic way,

A mask you wouldn't get behind.



Harrison and I were close for years

But it sort of faded when he wrote

He wanted to hear no more

Of my personal life.

I went to his reading in Galway

Where he walked in his cosy regalia

Crossed the length of the bar

To embrace me, manic about the necessity

Of doing big shows in the Balkans.

I taught him all he knows, says aging poet!

And he's forgotten the best bits,

He knows my work, how quickly

vanity will undo a man.



Tom Blackburn was Gregory Fellow

In my day, a bit mad

But a good and kind poet."



I read your last book

The Company of Children,

You sent me to review -

Your best by so far

It seemed an angel

Had stolen your pen -

The solitary aging singer

Whispering his last song."
Barry Tebb
Depression

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Spike Milligan 1918-04-16

Spike Milligan
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