Two poems, two ways of life

[RebLem]

The poems, of course, are from Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology. I think many of the problems we have come from having too many Cooney Potters and not enough Fiddler Joneses. RebLem


Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). Spoon River Anthology. 1916.


59. Cooney Potter

I Inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A thousand acres. But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres,
I bustled through the years with axe and plow,
Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.
Squire Higbee wrongs me to say
That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.
Eating hot pie and gulping coffee
During the scorching hours of harvest time
Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year.


60. Fiddler Jones


THE Earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor."
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

[The new erato]

Substitute acres with CDs here.

[jochanaan]

Lovely poetry.  And I'm definitely a Fiddler Jones.

[North Star]

Lovely poetry.  And I'm definitely a Fiddler Jones.

Hear, hear (or, make that '+2')