I
Being a Seven-Year-Old Boy's Elaborate Memory of the Day of His Birth
In through the window a sea-mustang brought me,
The poem to be read with the greatest possible speed, imitating the galloping of a sea-mustang, each time faster till it is so memorized, all the reptends musically blended, almost as though the poem were one long word, then of course, read very slowly.
(Smashing the window sash, breaking the law).
I was tied to his back—I do not know who caught me.
Up from Biloxi, up the great Mississippi,
Through the swamps, through the thaw, through the rains that grew raw,
On the tenth of November (the hail storm was nippy).
Up the slow, muddy Sangamon River—
(While we heard the towns cough and we heard the farms shiver),
The high wave rolled on. We heard a crow squawk,
With a voice like a buzz saw, destroying the day:
“Caw, caw, you are rolling to meet the tall Mohawk,
He will burn you to ashes and turn you to clay,
You will burn like a scarecrow with fire in the straw,
You are rolling and whirling on to the Mohawk,
Caw, caw,
Caw, caw.”
We sighted and broke the high hedge of Oak Ridge,
We rolled through its tombs. We saw Incubi walk.
We leaped the snow mounds like a pack of bloodhounds.
Dead lawyers were shrieking: “You are breaking the law.”
We spoiled and howled down the shrill cemetery sounds,
Swept townward: a green wave, a foam wave, a moon wave,
Up the dawn streets of Springfield, high tide in a cave,
Up to Edwards and Fifth street, and broke every windowpane.
They thought we were “cyclone,” earthquake, and rain.
We smashed the front door. We ramped by the bed's head.
On the wall-paper pattern sea-roses bloomed red.
There, for a ceiling bent crab-thorn, hazel-brush,
Red-haw, black-haw,
(And the storm blew a horn,)
There fluttered a carrion crow that cried: “Caw!”
A scare-crow so queer, and a crow that cried: “Caw, Caw! Caw!”
