Pointing at you, at us, at the rabble, they sigh and say, these abracadabra boys, “They lack jargons. They fail to distinguish between pustules and pistils. They knoweth not how the kumquat cometh.”

Our Hells

Milton unlocked hell for us

and let us have a look.

Dante did the same.

Each of these hells is special.

One is Milton’s, one Dante’s.

Milton put in all that for him

was hell on earth.

Dante put in all that for him

was hell on earth.

If you unlock your hell for me

And I unlock my hell for you

They will be two special hells,

Each of us showing what for us

is hell on earth.

Yours is one hell, mine another.

Moonlight and Maggots

The moonlight filters on the prairie.

The land takes back an old companion.

The young corn seems pleased with a visit.

In Illinois, in Iowa, this moontime is on.

A bongo looks out and talks about the look of the moon

As if always a bongo must talk somewhat so in moontime—

The moon is a milk-white love promise,

A present for the young corn to remember,

A caress for silk-brown tassels to come.

Spring moon to autumn moon measures one harvest.

All almanacs are merely so many moon numbers.

A house dizzy with decimal points and trick figures

And a belfry at the top of the world for sleep songs

And a home for lonesome goats to go to—

Like now, like always, the bongo takes up a moon theme—

There is no end to the ancient kit-kats inhabiting the moon:

Jack and the beanstalk and Jacob’s ladder helped them up,

Cats and sheep, the albatross, the phoenix and the dodo-bird,

They are all living on the moon for the sake of the bongo—

Castles on the moon, mansions, shacks and shanties, ramshackle

Huts of tarpaper and tincans, grand real estate properties

Where magnificent rats eat tunnels in colossal cheeses,

Where the rainbow chasers take the seven prisms apart

And put them together again and are paid in moon money—

The flying dutchman, paul bunyan, saint paul, john bunyan,

The little jackass who coughs gold pieces when you say bricklebrit—

They are all there on the moon and the rent not paid

And the roof leaking and the taxes delinquent—

Like now, like always, the bongo jabbers of the moon,

Of cowsheds, railroad tracks, corn rows and cornfield corners

Finding the filter of the moon an old friend—

Look at it—cries the bongo—have a look! have a look!

Well, what of it? comes the poohpooh—

Always the bongo is a little loony—comes the poohpooh,

The bongo is a poor fish and a long ways from home.

Be like me; be an egg, a hardboiled egg, a pachyderm

Practical as a buzzsaw and a hippopotamus put together.

Get the facts and no monkeybusiness what I mean.

The moon is a dead cinder, a ball of death, a globe of doom.

Long ago it died of lost motion, maggots masticated the surface of it