Perhaps I am a weakling with my dream Of buying houses, for I dream of joys And build my palaces, invite my joys To enter and be glad. They never come! She took the farm and ran it. It was business, But business in disorder with a loss For seed which did not sprout, and stock that died, And glutted markets when the fruit was good. I worked awhile, I fished once in the river, I sat a few times on my wooded bluff-- And then I fled and left her to the farm To rule a single farmer who cut weeds, Abandoned weeds for plowing, left the plow To make a flower bed, following her whims Obedient, indifferent to results.... If you destroy a bird’s nest that’s the end. The nesting birds return to find the branch Where they had builded with such patient care, All naked of their work. They look and fly And think of what? But build no more that year. But if you take a twig and scratch the grains About the ant hill, overturn their work, Stop up the door, the little folk begin To build again, clear out the ruined hall-- They cannot be discouraged like the birds. I think I am an ant--for even yet I’m looking for a house, or better a home. There is that house walled in with earth--that’s sure-- But if there is no house to fill my joy Why have I looked for houses all my life? THE CHURCH AND THE HOTEL Over the dead lake And in a dusty sky The full moon is speared by the spire of the Baptist church; Or now it hangs over the Groveland Hotel: I do not know whether it is over the spire Or over the hotel. In a dusty sky the moon Is the bottom of a copper kettle Which cannot be scoured into brightness. The sky is a faded mosquito net Over a brass cylinder cap Dulled with verdigris. Some years ago, Not many years ago, The Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. At the pulpit under this spire With habitual regularity Used to say: Let us pray. And the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. With habitual regularity Used to preach On the wages of sin. And on Sunday evenings As he was saying let us pray, Ed Breen in Henry Hughes’ buffet, There in the Groveland Hotel Sitting with cronies at a table would say: “Another round, Henry, Bourbon for me.” And at 7:30, At the very moment When the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. Was saying let us pray, Ed Breen would be beginning the night, And would be saying to Henry Hughes: “Another round, Henry, Bourbon for me.”