Lucinda

Did you ever read Spoon River Anthology in school?  In tenth grade or so I think I read some of the poems.  Not the whole thing.  But I was already familiar with Spoon River because my sister had read it some time earlier, and as was our habit with each other since we don’t often have similar tastes in books (thus we didn’t fear ruining the story for the other), told me in detail about the whole thing.  It is a collection of poems in which people tell about their lives after they’ve passed on from them.  Some of them interweave, as the decisions of some affect others and so on.  I think those were the ones that Kami found the most interesting.  But my favorite of the ones I read was Lucinda Matlock.  I love the feel she has about her life—a sense of serenity and definitely fulfillment, even though she’d experienced hardship and had to work very hard.  What do you think, do you like it too?

 

Lucinda Matlock

Edgar Lee Masters 

        I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
        And played snap-out at Winchester.
        One time we changed partners,
        Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
5      And then I found Davis.
        We were married and lived together for seventy years,
        Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
        Eight of whom we lost
        Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
10    I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
        I made the garden, and for holiday
        Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
        And by Spoon River gathering many a shell
        And many a flower and medicinal weed—
15    Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
        At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
        And passed to a sweet repose.
        What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
        Anger, discontent, and drooping hopes?
20    Degenerate sons and daughters,
        Life is too strong for you—
        It takes life to love Life.