Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SINGING INSECTS, by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN First Line: Semi - singing insects - boys catch in june Last Line: And as the caged insects sing. Subject(s): Insects; Marriage; Bugs; Weddings; Husbands; Wives | ||||||||
SEMIsinging insectsboys catch in June, And put in bamboo cages. There, through waning days, They sing their lives away. The children laugh, And say, "See! The Gitcho sings for joy." Men know 'tis misery makes them sing; Hopeless heart-cry for fields once known. So, I in my bamboo and paper cage, Do sing and smile and curtsey, As from my husband's people I have learned to do. And men, like children, cry "How happy is the stranger, our brother's foreign bride." Godif God there beknows better. When the soul is struck it must find voice; And mine cries out in song that none may know None here; but merciful Godor merciless My own peoplethose across the sea Writing is harder than speech When the heart is dead. But with pen, too, must I lightly jestand lie. For they, most of all, must never know They who most of all opposed, When I loved him and would become his wife. That love my glory was; and ever shall be; The memory of it. Of that can no man rob me; Not even heLove gave me a soul, And he who taught me love Can not take from me that which his teaching gave: Not though his taunts be true; that I be not his wife; That he had a wife ere he met and married me. A wife of his own people, to whom he will return, Leaving me, neither wife nor maid, A stranger in a strange land, his land It may be true. Life holds much of cruelty: I have seen cats torture mice and birds. Men call it play; Boys catch and cage Semi to hear them sing. Cruel? He says that it was the cruelty of a foreign woman Whom long ago he lovedone of my land and race Who, smiling, drew him on, then turned And stabbed him with her scorn, That drove him to revenge, which he soughtand found. Cruel? But cruelty gives courage, does it not, to those who suffer Those not altogether weak? And courage I shall pray for; Prayto my own heartwhat else? For one God, I think, drives out another And I gave up mine to follow his. His Gods Idols, deaf and blindare all Gods dead and blind; All idols, made of dream-stuff that is the fruit Of man's helplessness and childish yearning? Or all made of stone, as my own heart is? But there is that Beneath this heart of mine Which must give life to stone If men, and women, too, be not all liars. And I shall pray this dead heart of mine For courage to live ondeath were the easy thing And shield from shame that which lies beneath it. For the world will laugh as now I laugh; And as the caged insects sing. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A BLESSING FOR A WEDDING by JANE HIRSHFIELD A SUITE FOR MARRIAGE by DAVID IGNATOW ADVICE TO HER SON ON MARRIAGE by MARY BARBER THE RABBI'S SON-IN-LAW by SABINE BARING-GOULD KISSING AGAIN by DORIANNE LAUX A TIME PAST by DENISE LEVERTOV CHERRY TREES IN APRIL by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN |
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