Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONG OF LITTLE HINES, by RUTH SUCKOW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONG OF LITTLE HINES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Little hines, who mends watches
Last Line: With the diapason sticking.
Subject(s): Musical Instruments; Singing & Singers


Little Hines, who mends watches,
Is writing an epic.

He has taken the universe for his theme
and calls it
Man and God.

He has a little shop with a gray front,
and there, in his work-room,
with a green-painted counter,
and watches hanging—like drying fruit—on a black cloth,
and pictures of dogs, cows, and Abraham Lincoln on the wall,
and a stove on a wrinkled tin plate,
he examines all day
the minute machinery of watches.

But at night,
in his closed back room,
his spirit examines
the vast and intricate workings
of the universe.
Miltonic angels sweep down about him on great wings;
caverns of flame spurt and roar beneath him,
and there is a sound of harp-music.

These things he records on large white paper
with the water-mark of an eagle.

The soul of little Hines
has also written a lyric in my heart,—
all in a minor key;
and when I see pitiful gentle things—
violets struggling through a hard soil—
it sings and quavers in my heart,
grotesquely sweet—
a Marche Triomphale played on a cabinet organ,
wheezy and out of tune,
with the diapason sticking.





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