Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SINGING INSECTS, by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SINGING INSECTS, by                    
First Line: Semi - singing insects - boys catch in june
Last Line: And as the caged insects sing.
Subject(s): Insects; Marriage; Bugs; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


SEMI—singing insects—boys catch in June,
And put in bamboo cages. There, through waning days,
They sing their lives away. The children laugh,
And say, "See! The Gitcho sings for joy."
Men know 'tis misery makes them sing;
Hopeless heart-cry for fields once known.
So, I in my bamboo and paper cage,
Do sing and smile and curtsey,
As from my husband's people I have learned to do.
And men, like children, cry
"How happy is the stranger, our brother's foreign bride."
God—if God there be—knows better.
When the soul is struck it must find voice;
And mine cries out in song that none may know—
None here; but merciful God—or merciless—
My own people—those across the sea—
Writing is harder than speech
When the heart is dead.
But with pen, too, must I lightly jest—and lie.
For they, most of all, must never know—
They who most of all opposed,
When I loved him and would become his wife.
That love my glory was; and ever shall be;
The memory of it. Of that can no man rob me;
Not even he—Love gave me a soul,
And he who taught me love
Can not take from me that which his teaching gave:
Not though his taunts be true; that I be not his wife;
That he had a wife ere he met and married me.
A wife of his own people, to whom he will return,
Leaving me, neither wife nor maid,
A stranger in a strange land, his land—
It may be true. Life holds much of cruelty:
I have seen cats torture mice and birds. Men call it play;
Boys catch and cage Semi to hear them sing.
Cruel? He says that it was the cruelty of a foreign woman
Whom long ago he loved—one of my land and race—
Who, smiling, drew him on, then turned
And stabbed him with her scorn,
That drove him to revenge, which he sought—and found.
Cruel? But cruelty gives courage, does it not, to those who suffer—
Those not altogether weak? And courage I shall pray for;
Pray—to my own heart—what else?
For one God, I think, drives out another—
And I gave up mine to follow his. His Gods—
Idols, deaf and blind—are all Gods dead and blind;
All idols, made of dream-stuff that is the fruit
Of man's helplessness and childish yearning?
Or all made of stone, as my own heart is?
But there is that
Beneath this heart of mine
Which must give life to stone
If men, and women, too, be not all liars.
And I shall pray this dead heart of mine
For courage to live on—death were the easy thing—
And shield from shame that which lies beneath it.
For the world will laugh as now I laugh;
And as the caged insects sing.





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