father

Your name with ev'ry pleasure here I place,
The last effusions of my muse to grace.
O charming Phillis! may the same extend
Through time's dark night: our praise together blend;
To this we surely may pretend to aim
Your acting and my rhymes attention claim.
Long, long in mem'ry's page your fame shall live;
You, who such ecstacy so often give;
O'er minds, o'er hearts triumphantly you reign:
In Berenice, in Phaedra, and Chimene,
Your tears and plaintive accents all engage:
Beyond compare in proud Camilla's rage;

Why did he promise me
that we would build ourselves
an ark all by ourselves
out in back of the house
on New York Avenue
in Union City New Jersey
to the singing of the streetcars
after the story
of Noah whom nobody
believed about the waters
that would rise over everything
when I told my father
I wanted us to build
an ark of our own there
in the back yard under
the kitchen could we do that
he told me that we could
I want to I said and will we
he promised me that we would

Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha's daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,
As yet was in a molten form
The leaden stars, the rainy hammer
Swung by my father from his dome.

I knew the message of the winter,
The darted hail, the childish snow,

The father's name ye ne'er shall be told

Of my darling unborn life;
"Shame, shame," ye cry, "on the strumpet bold!"

Yet I'm an honest wife.

To whom I'm wedded, ye ne'er shall be told,

Yet he's both loving and fair;
He wears on his neck a chain of gold,

And a hat of straw doth he wear.

If scorn 'tis vain to seek to repel,

On me let the scorn be thrown.
I know him well, and he knows me well,

And to God, too, all is known.

Sir Parson and Sir Bailiff, again,

The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises
come to be healed of their rage.
The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften,
the birds in their throats awake.
They all stand hand in hand
and the trees around them,
forever on the verge
of becoming one of them,
stop shuddering and speak their first word.

But that is not the beginning.
It is the end of the story,

The very skies wee black with shame,
As near my moment drew;
The very hour before you cam
I felt I hated you.
II
But now I see how fair you are,
How divine your eyes,
It seems I step upon a star
To leap to Paradise.
III
What care I who your father was:
('Twas better no to know);
IV
You're mine and mine alone because
I love and love you so.
V
What though you only bear my name,
I hold my head on high;
For none shall have a right to claim
A right to you but I.
VI

Balow, my babe, lie still and sleep!
It grieves me sore to see thee weep.
Wouldst thou be quiet I'se be glad,
Thy mourning makes my sorrow sad:
Balow my boy, thy mother's joy,
Thy father breeds me great annoy--
   Balow, la-low!

When he began to court my love,
And with his sugred words me move,
His faynings false and flattering cheer
To me that time did not appear:
But now I see most cruellye
He cares ne for my babe nor me--
   Balow, la-low!

Lie still, my darling, sleep awhile,

Off on the prairie, where the balmy air
Kisses the waving corn,
There lives a farmer, with a daughter fair--
Fair as a summer's morn!
She has a nature gentle as a dove,
Pure as the mountain snows;
Say! is it strange that everyone should love--
Love such a girl as Rose?

Beautiful Rose! lovely Rose!
Pride of the prairie bower!
Everybody loves her--everybody knows
She is the fairest flower.

Rose is a lady yet from early dawn,
Labors her skillful hand;

It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.

The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.

Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.

And a girl should say:

[Author's Note: The title means "little father" or "dear little father", a term of endearment applied to the Tsar in Russian folk-song. --T.B.A.]

From yonder gilded minaret
Beside the steel-blue Neva set,
I faintly catch, from time to time,
The sweet, aerial midnight chime--
"God save the Tsar!"

Above the ravelins and the moats
Of the white citadel it floats;
And men in dungeons far beneath
Listen, and pray, and gnash their teeth--
"God save the Tsar!"

The soft reiterations sweep