She ragged him, nagged him.

Her initial was X for Xantippe.

Socrates learned about women from her.

She was a shrew, a virago, a hell cat.

So they say.

So-they-say.

What we know is what they say.

We do not know what Xantippe would reply

If asked, why did you rag and nag Socrates?

She might say he was lousy and bring evidence.

She might lie till we saw she was a regular liar.

She might show him as lazy, gabby, no provider.

Or she might hurl many furious useless words

Till she sounded like a leather-tongued scold.

We know only what they say.

We have not heard from Xantippe herself.

Arms

(For Wallace Stevens)

Renoir goes on painting.

A man from south France tells me it is so.

One picture a day, good or bad, the old man goes on.

And a little work every day on one big picture for God

and children and remembered women.

So Renoir, his right arm no good anymore

And the left arm half gone,

So Renoir goes on.

And when you come again

We will go to the Edelweiss for jazz

Or to Hester’s dirty place on the river

Or to some Chinese dump where they bring what you want

and no questions asked,

And I will ask you why Renoir does it

And I believe you will tell me.

Eugene V. Debs

On his face as he lay, at peace at last, in Terre Haute,

There was the majestic trajectory of a trail from the earth to the stars.

The cotillions of the Milky Way could not bewilder him by their numbers.

He had always dreamed of paths difficult for human feet, bridges impossible to the calculations of accepted engineers, union depots open to all the races and languages of man.

He was a railroad man, familiar to the link and coupling pin, to rain, zero weather, snow plows, stalled engines, the first Brotherhood of Railroad Firemen, the first American Railway Union.

He was an orator, a jailbird, a presidential candidate, an enemy of war, a convict, a philosopher, storyteller, friend of man.

Said a poet, “He had ten hopes to your one.”

A sister laid a spray of four Crusader red roses on his breast.

Over in Valhalla, if Valhalla is not demolished, rebuilt, renamed, he speaks at ease with Garrison, John Brown, Albert Parsons, Spartacus.

Ezra*

Good reading good reading

O most excellent reading

If can easy pass over

Easy skip idiotics

pedantics pomposities

Good reading sure sure

I have learnt

how to read Ez

He is my crazy brudder

Good Babies Make Good Poems

Doctor Williams having delivered

eleven hundred babies

in Rutherford New Jersey

also delivered from himself

eleven hundred poems

each poem a baby

to grow up and please the Doctor

and give him pride in himself

as the mother of each baby

and himself her obstetrician

thus having two prides

ever pleasing his heart—

one the embryo poem

in his fertile brain-womb—

the other his obstetric skill