MASTERS, Edgar Lee


Spoon River Anthology

…..

Alfred Moir

Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,

And rotted down by indifference

And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?

Why, with all of my errant steps

Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?

And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,

As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys

To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink

Fall on me like rain that runs off,

Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?

And why did I never kill a man

Like Jack McGuire?

But instead I mounted a little in life,

And I owe it all to a book I read.

But why did I go to Mason City,

Where I chanced to see the book in a window,

With its garish cover luring my eye?

And why did my soul respond to the book,

As I read it over and over?
…..

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,

And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,

Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,

And then I found Davis.

We were married and lived together for seventy years,

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,

Eight of whom we lost

Ere I had reached the age of sixty.

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,

I made the garden, and for holiday

Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,

And many a flower and medicinal weed —

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,

And passed to a sweet repose.

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you —

It takes life to love Life.
…..