Poesy

1.  The Midnight Cry
2.  Invitation to Eden
3.  Wild Raspberries




1.

         The Midnight Cry

Out of the upstate wilderness

A prophet named Miller, a farmer

After years of Bible study

And complex computations

Came forth and preached the Word:

“The world is coming to an end

In A.D. 1843

At midnight on April 23.

“Christ will come in glory in the heavens

And the righteous, rising without wrinkle

Shall soar like angels through the air

And live forever

While earth and the wicked burn.

Prepare!”

In Gotham this preaching

Caused a great stir.

While scholars argued,

Thousands scoffed but hundreds believed

Wept, watched and waited.

To the soon Coming

Tobacco and snuff boxes

Were immolated

And fine ladies

Eager to rise without wrinkle

Forsook their lace, abandoned their toilettes

Amid a great gathering in of believers

Especially debtors

Since preachers urged the canceling of debts.

Yet even the zealous debated:

Should one still buy and sell

Haul, plant, bake, sew buttons

Hammer nails or not?

And were the date and time so certain?

“At midnight or thereabouts,” said some;

“At midnight,” warned precisians, “on the dot.”

April 23, foggy and overcast

Came and went

The world unscorched

God’s wrath unspent.

From upstate

Prophet Miller conceded

The first date ill reckoned:

“Look ye now to 1844

And the true date, October 22!”

Thereafter

A blue comet trailing fire

Scorched the sky

Strange rays flashed about the sun

And crosses lit the heavens

Till even Broadway dandies

Bowery sports

Cynics, the lewd and the learned

Were at sixes and sevens.

On Delancey Street a devout man, Brother Stone

Having gathered unto himself a congregation

Held meetings in a hall

Preached and prayed, depicting

Glory and incineration

Till converts, assailed by prophecies

Sermons, tracts and meteoric showers,

Cast upon the floor and trampled there

Gold safety pins

False teeth and artificial flowers.

Shoemakers gave away their shoes

Milliners their bonnets

Vendors their cakes and ices;

In shop windows signs appeared:

“Repent!”

“Closed until the Coming!”

“Muslin for Ascension robes

At reduced prices.”

Here and there

A crazed few, having donned

Long white flowing robes

Deemed fit for angels,

Climbed steeples and barn roofs, unable

The last months to endure,

And leaping to meet their Savior

Broke their necks or landed in manure.

These excesses

Brother Stone deplored:

“When the Day comes,

Going to a high place, prayerfully

Await the Lord.”

Yet even as he spoke to his flock

Flames leaped outside a window

And the sky burst.

“He comes!” they cried.

“Help!”

“Fire!”

“We’re sainted!”

At once

A dozen ladies gasped,

“Receive me, Lord!” and fainted

While the panicky brethren

Surged out doors and windows, some

In gowns and sandals,

To the guffaws of onlookers,

Local rowdies having lit

A blaze of shavings

And set off Roman candles.

Hardly had this flurry died

When the Last Day was upon them:

In cemeteries, on hilltops

Or by the hearth or on the roof at home

The faithful waited

Robed, Bible in hand, prayer in heart

Heeders

Of the True Midnight Cry

Looking to the East to see the Bridegroom

In a split sky.

Past midnight

With the Bridegroom lacking

And the wicked and the world intact,

Hope gone,

Again they sighed, murmured

Wept till dawn.

Believers

Take the jeers of infidels in stride

But this was cruel

To be mocked savagely by those

One thought God’s fuel.

“Brethren,” said Brother Stone

On the next Sabbath

To a shrunken congregation,

“We were misled by zeal sublime;

Ignore the world

Work, pray, presume not;

God comes in His own time.”

Heeding him

Some packed away their robes

Against the next True Coming;

Some cut them up for curtains;

Some burned them in chagrin

And flaunting

Gold teeth and safety pins and lace,

Lapsed in sin.

But for months and even years thereafter

At intervals a few

Scorning Babylon, their zeal unsated,

Toward midnight tiptoed out

Keen in love, rich in hope
Eyed the East, and waited.

© 2012  Clifford Browder

2.

            Invitation to Eden

The citizens of Gotham, being vexed

By brick and plaster dust, their nerves

And eardrums frayed

By traffic screeches and the moil of multitudes

Blasts, hammerings, hewings

And the grind of trade

Cried out for air and greenery. 

Therefore the city fathers

Acquired vast tracts of land

Northward from the city: 

A shanty-blotched terrain

Of swamp and scrub with steeps

Of jutting rock

And rag gatherers and pig keepers hunched away

Among cinder piles, brickbats and rubbish heaps

Hideous to behold. 

To redeem this site

The City Council commissioned

Messrs. Olmsted & Vaux

Landscapers extraordinaire, apostles

Of art and artifice

To create

A people’s park and pleasure garden worthy

Of a great metropolis.

At their command

Squatters were expelled

Bone boilers driven out

Open sewers abated

Shanties knocked down

And Celtic piggeries

Obliterated. 

The spongy mire was drained

Marsh smells whiffled away

Swamp waters gathered into ponds.

“Let rude outcroppings,” said Mr. Olmsted,

“Be clothed with wisteria and periwinkle.”

“Let streams,” said Mr. Vaux,

“Scant down stony slopes

With a lyric tinkle.”

“Let there be,” said the one,

“Black-faced Southdown sheep

In a field free

Of thorn and nettle.”

“And a carriage drive,” said the other,

“Graveled and raked, then sprinkled

That the dust may settle.”

“But into these green precincts,” they enjoined,

“Shall come no hearse or wagon

Or commercial rig. 

The grass shall not be trodden

(Save where signs say COMMON)

Nor flower picked

Nor leaf nor fruit nor twig.

“From the urban Arcadia

Shall be banned all games of chance

Potations of intemperance

Dogs, jugglers, brawlers

Fast drivers

And hurdy-gurdy men. 

Nor shall the cry of the huckster

Rasp through glade or glen!”

So they decreed. 

Over months and years

The land was delved and daintied

Till in leafy bosques and dells

Thrushes fluted

Through a delicate gloom

While on sunlit plazas

Fountains effervesced

A skyward spume. 

Planted oaks grew sturdy,

Willows suppled and elms arched

Where paths abutted.

On soggy brooksides

The dog-toothed violet bloomed.

Swans glided, pea fowl strutted.

Rustic bridges they decreed

And nooks and walkways

For either gender

But for the softer sex

At discreet sites

Comfort cottages and a restaurant

With airy provender.

Proclaimed Messrs. Olmsted & Vaux: 

“Here reigns tranquility

And the sweet wilding brood of Nature. 

Let mothers and nursemaids flock

With their charge of little ones. 

Let the banker come from his counting house

And humble artisans

“And from sunless tenements, the poor

To find boon and balm

Uplifted in mind and body

By a twiggy calm.

“Here for all citizens

Is strife’s surcease. 

Here is Eden, here is peace.”

This paradise

Met swift acclaim. 

Shedding toil and worry

By foot, hoof, and wheel

Gotham came.

     © 2012  Clifford Browder

3.

                                          Wild Raspberries

Under a scorching sun

Through the wet, sucking heat of July

Their tight red-hairy jackets

Grow slowly

Then split, revealing

Green fruit that mellowing

To deep red, plumps and glistens

And when touched, tumbles

Into my stained and sticky fingers

Yielding

If unripe, a tartness, but if ripe

A burst of sweetness, joy.

One pays a price.

As I reach

Deep into the bramble, deeper

Lured by juicy clusters,

Their bristling, thorned stems

And spined leaves scratch my skin.

Scrambled over

By daddy-long-legs, spiders, ants

And buzzed by wasps,

I brush the ivy’s venom,

Risk a blistering itch.

Having plundered in and feasted

I yank, twist back out

Fighting their clinging branches

And hooked twigs,

My shirt torn,

My boots clumped with burrs.

Plucked, each one leaves

In the trampled briar

A red, orange-centered star.

Marveling at the white of their underleaves

I lick my looting fingers

And bleeding crosshatched arms;

Their seeds clog my teeth.

Sweat-drenched,

Lips smeared, I savor

Their sweet

Yet bitter blood-tinged juice.

© 2012  Clifford Browder