Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ECCLESIASTES, by MORRIS GILBERT BISHOP


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ECCLESIASTES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the smoke-blue cabaret
Last Line: "and whose hands are bands.'"
Subject(s): Singing & Singers; Songs


In the smoke-blue cabaret
She sang some comic thing:
I heeded not at all
Till "Sing!" she cried, "Sing!"
So I sang in tune with her
The only song I know:
"The doors shall be shut in the streets,
And the daughters of music brought low."

Her eyes and working lips
Gleamed through the cruddled air --
I tried to sing with her
Her song of devil-may-care.
But in the shouted chorus
My lips would not be stilled:
"The rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not filled."

Then one came to my table
Who said, with a laughing glance,
"If that is the way you sing,
Why don't you learn to dance?"
But I said: "With this one song
My heart and lips are cumbered --
'The crooked cannot be made straight,
Nor that which is wanting, numbered.'

"This song must I sing,
Whatever else I covet --
Hear the end of my song,
Hear the beginning of it:
'More bitter than death the woman
(Beside me still she stands)
Whose heart is snares and nets,
And whose hands are bands.'"





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net