Well, they're quite dead, Rambuncto; thoroughly dead.

It was a natural thing enough; my eyes

Stared baffled down the forest-aisles, brown and green,

Not learning what the marks were. Still, who learns?

Not I, who stooped and picked the things that day,

Scarlet and gold and smooth, friend ... smooth enough!

And she's in a vault now, old Jane Fotheringham,

My mother-in-law; and my wife's seven aunts,

And that cursed bird that used to sit and croak

Upon their pear-tree—they threw scraps to him—

My wife, too. Lord, that was a curious thing!

Because—"I don't like mushrooms much," I said,

And they ate all I picked. And then they died.

But ... Well, who knows it isn't better that way?

It's quieter, at least.... Rambuncto—friend—

Why, you're not going?... Well—it's a stupid year,

And the world's very useless.... Sorry.... Still

The dusk intransience that I much prefer

Leaves place for little hope and less regret.

I don't suppose he'd care, to stay to dine

Under the circumstances.... What's life for?

There was a grackle sat on our old pear tree—

Don't ask me why—I never did really know;

But he made my wife and me feel, for really the very first time

We were out in the actual country, hindering things to grow;

It gave us rather a queer feeling to hear the grackle grackle,

But when it got to be winter time he got up and went thence

And now we shall never know, though we watch the tree till April,

Whether his curious crying ever made song or sense.

Grackles, trees—

I been thinkin' 'bout 'em all: I been thinkin' they're all right:

Nothin' much—Gosh, nothin' much against God, even.

God made little apples, a hobo sang in Kankakee,

Shattered apples, I picked you up under a tree, red wormy apples, I ate you....

That lets God out.

There were three green birds on the tree, there were three wailing cats against a green dawn....

'Gene Field sang, "The world is full of a number of things,"

'Gene Field said, "When they caught me I was living in a tree...."

'Gene Field said everything in Chicago of the eighties.

Now he's dead, I say things, say 'em well, too....

'Gene Field ... back in the lost days, back in the eighties,

Singing, colyumning ... 'Gene Field ... forgotten ...

Back in Arkansaw there was a green bird, too,

I can remember how he sang, back in the lost days, back in the eighties.

Uncle Yon Swenson under the tree chewing slowly, slowly....

Memories, memories!

There are only trees now, no 'Gene, no eighties

Gray cats, I can feel your fur in my heart ...

Green grackle, I remember now,

Back in the lost days, back in the eighties

The cat ate you.

Apple green bird on a wooden bough,

And the brazen sound of a long, loud row,

And "Child, take the train, but mind what you do—

Frost, tonight, and Sandburg too!"

Then I sally forth, half wild, half cowed,

Till I come to the surging, impervious crowd,

The wine-filled, the temperance, the sober, the pied,

The Poets that cover the countryside!

The Poets I never would meet till tonight!

A gleam of their eyes in the fading light,

And I took them all in—the enormous throng—

And with one great bound I bolted along.

If the garden had merely held birds and flowers!

But I hear a voice—they have talked for hours—

"Frost tonight—" if 'twere merely he!

Half wild, half cowed, I flee, I flee!

He had been singing, but I had not heard his voice;

He had been bothering the rest with song;

But I, most comfortably far

Within the city's stimulating jar

Feeling for bus-conductors and for flats,

And shop-girls buying too expensive hats,

And silver-serviced dinners,

And various kinds of pleasant urban sinners,

And riding on the subway and the L,

Had much beside his song to hear and tell.

But one day (it was Spring, when poets ride

Afield to