The Deluge

Look, like water beetles
Leaving all my shores
The ships ply where the wave embattles
Ringing from the wars
All sides of my discontent
Disgorging horn-shaped continent.

Grandpa cast his dollars
On the mill-stream pond.
The wheel went ’round and what the waters
Brought back to his hand
Those honest waters did augment.
The going rate was ten percent.

His seed sowed in Grandmother
Four times got a son.
Each son in turn was led down cellar
When he reached twenty-one
(As how many times he had been led
To the justice of the wood-shed)

And there beneath the beams
(It smelled of damp clay,
Father said, he felt the stems
Of his hair wither like hay
But it was only cobwebs), took
His patrimony in one sack.

Then all four in fine fettle
Those confident tadpoles
Dropped their tails in Grandpa’s puddle,
Gaped like crocodiles,
And swallowed every loan afloat.
When Grandpa died the dam went out.

That was a time to try
Men’s souls and try men’s credit!
From bank to bank a dreadful cry
Spread ’round and all who heard it
Came crying for their rightful gold.
Who could stem that angry flood?

So Father rode downstream
On fifty million logs.
And that was how he made a name
For me. Those old bull-frogs
My uncles chug-a-rummed around
The stumps on Father’s shaved-off land,

Paid all their debts, and played
Their talents out. And Father
Taught me how to catch high tide
And ride in an affair
Of men and nations; and I learned
What to do when tides turned.

See my ships at sea
Where all the world’s aflood!
I made those waters rise, I saw
The whole world drowned for good.
I saw how my black fleets would come
And anchor in my harbor home,

But now I see the waters
Still rising, rising fast,
My ships ply through the deep harbors
And steam on past
Over the towers of my father,
Over Grandpa’s buried cellar.