Maine's klaraste röst

Dice Head lighthouse, Castine, Maine. (lånat foto)

Philip Booth (1925-2007) var en poet från Maine och han var, enligt många, Maine's klaraste röst. Han var född i New Hampshire men kom att tillbringa en stor del av sitt liv i Castine, i ett hus som funnits i hans familjs ägo i fem generationer. Booth inspirerades av Robert Frost och D H Thoreau.

Reawekening in New England

In a house twice older
than I am, a man closing
on seventy, newly
recovered from going
half blind, I'm
home;

up before
sunup, still dreaming
three women, my back
braced by the grace
of an Eames chair,
I'm here:
                reunited
with Chekov, living
in books, feeling
for words, revising
this poem;
                    here's
where I am , up
against odds,
having
an ardent dawn.

Från diktsamlingen "Pairs" 1994.

Wild Women Blues

I've got a different system
And a way of my own,
When my man starts kicking
I let him find another home.
I get full of good liquor
And walk the street all night,
Go home and put my man out
If he don't treat me right,
Wild women don't worry,
Wild women don't have the blues.

You never get nothing
By being an angel child.
You better change your ways
And get real wild.
I want to tell you something
I wouldn't tell you no lie,
Wild women are the only kind
That really get by,
'Cause wild women don't worry,
Wild women don't have the blues.

Ida Cox (1896-1967)

(Wild Women Blues är från 1924).



Man kan hitta dikten (och många andra) i "The Virago Book of Love Poetry" från 1998.