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Title: Street Music
Author: John Presland [
More Titles by Presland]
I
There comes an old man to our street,
Dragging his knobby, lame old feet,
Once a week he comes and stands,
A concertina in his hands,
There in the gutter stops and plays,
No matter fine or rainy days
--Very humble and very old--
Pavement's for them who make so bold!
Prim, starched nurses, and ladies fair
With taffeta dresses and shining hair,
And gay little children, who break and run
To give him a penny--he seems to feel
(Out-at-elbows and out-at-heel)
That they've a right to the morning sun;
And so with gnarled old hands he'll play
For an hour, perhaps, then take his way,
Dragging his knobby, lame old feet
In the gutter of this quiet street.
There is no grudging in his eyes,
Nor anger, nor the least surprise
At the uneven scales of fate:
Glad of the sun, against the rain
Hunching his shoulders, age and pain
He takes as his appointed state,
And stands, like Lazarus, at the door
With the dread humility of the poor.
STREET MUSIC
II
I've heard a mad old fiddler play
Harsh, discordant, broken strains,
Down the wet street on a winter's day
When the rain was speckling the window-panes,
And though it was middle afternoon
And none of the lamps were lighted yet,
The night had settled down too soon
And the sky was low and dark and wet.
In a cracked old voice I've heard him sing,
Strangely capering to and fro,
Sawing his fiddle on one worn string,
A grotesque and desolate thing of woe,
Wagging his head and stamping his feet
(Unwitting of the passers-by
Hurrying through the gloomy street)
His shoulders hunched and his head awry.
The children would laugh when they saw him pass,
And "Look," they'd say, "at Crazy Joe!"
And press their faces against the glass
To watch him--leering and lurching--go.
Where he comes from, nobody knows,
But he, being mad, is in God's hand,
And sacred upon his way he goes;
And his music--God will understand.
[The end]
John Presland's poem: Street Music
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