|
|
|
Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MUMBLIN' MOTT, by VIRGINIA MOORE Poet's Biography
First Line: Delightedly devoid of useless brain
Last Line: Who had the sense to be an idiot!
Alternate Author Name(s): Untermeyer, Louis, Mrs.
Subject(s): Fools; Speech Disorders; Idiots; Stuttering; Muteness
First Line: Delightedly devoid of useless brain
Last Line: Who had the sense to be an idiot!
Alternate Author Name(s): Untermeyer, Louis, Mrs.
Subject(s): Fools; Speech Disorders; Idiots; Stuttering; Muteness
Delightedly devoid of useless brain,
Mad Mott had made a crony of the rain
And knew no rival: now they stood apart,
Mumbling a crooked beauty, heart to heart,
Inside a soaking cotton field. The wet
Droll dusk of his demented face was set
Child-like against the measured silver slant
Of his uncalculated confidant.
The chill rain taunted Mott: "You haven't wit
Enough to leap into a lightning slit!"
Mott dipped his eyes. Determined thunder shed
Hostility upon a woollen head
Grinning like chippies. Then a yellow shot
Of lightning hit the heels of mumblin' Mott.
-- And I who heard his laughter seemed to smell
A whiff of dark deceptive asphodel.
What is this carcass with a grinning head,
Buried, and rained upon, and dug up dead?
Here where the weevil and the boll have lain
Mad Mott accepts the challenge of the rain
Unfalteringly, his rags upon a back
No less exuberant for being black.
And I, bleached white and sane, can envy Mott
Who had the sense to be an idiot!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
Other Poems of Interest...
STUTTERER by MICHAEL S. HARPER
TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER by JOHN DRYDEN
HIS NAME WAS KEKO by THEODORE BRIDGMAN
RHAPSODY OF THE DEAF MUTE by EDOUARD JOACHIM CORBIERE
BORN DUMB by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE
IF I CAN BE BY HER by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KING
PARAPHRASE by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KING
SHE DOES NOT HEAR by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KING