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| Source: Stablecog |
How will the future reckon with this man?
––Edwin Markham, “The Man with the Hoe”
There is no shape more terrible than this––
. . . dangerous man . . .
ignorant demagogue . . .
inscrutably smiling
thick with power oozed over branches,
the capitalistic offices
. . . makes us all turn green with fright
and through the green his crimson furrow grooves.
He must have come up from a drain.
Knowing this man . . .
(mean, underhanded, lacking all attributes . . .)
is a man who makes avenging armies.
He makes of laws
a broken staff,
disturbs polite conversation . . .
The knotted fabric of our lives,
our words, our lives, our pains––nothing!
We talk despairingly and drink our tea,
everyone a life alone.
All day, all night, we hear, we feel,
men, women in cities, multitudes, millions.
The dead and the dead
of spirit now joined . . .
All––only putty that tyranny rolls
between its fingers . . .
Poor people make poor land.
Author’s Note: Cento—lines & partial lines (occasional slight alterations), in order of appearance, from: Edwin Markham; Sarah N. Cleghorn, Cleghorn; Lola Ridge; Archibald Fleming; E. B. White; William Rose Benét; Roy Campbell; Alfred Hayes; Edwin Rolfe; Selden Rodman; S. Funaroff, Funaroff; Oscar Williams; Josephine W. Johnson; Baratolomeo Vanzetti; James Palmer Wade; James Agee; William Stephens; Eunice Clark; Frederic Prokosch, Prokosch; Hugh MacDiarmid, MacDiarmid; Pare Lorentz. All poets included in A New Anthology of Modern Poetry, 1939 Ed. Selden Rodman.
Jacquelyn Shah. A.B., M.A., M.F.A. & Ph.D.––English/creative writing. Publications: poetry chapbook, small fry; full-length poetry book, What to Do with Red; poems in journals. In 2023 her memoir Limited Engagement: A Way of Living was published, and she was a Pushcart Prize nominee for Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor.
