Morris Bishop

IN the smoke-blue cabaret

She sang some comic thing:

I heeded not at all

Till “Sing!” she cried, “Sing!”

So I sang in tune with her

The only song I know:

“The doors shall be shut in the streets,

And the daughters of music brought low.”

Her eyes and working lips

Gleamed through the cruddled air—

I tried to sing with her

Her song of devil-may-care.

But in the shouted chorus

My lips would not be stilled:

“The rivers run into the sea,

Yet the sea is not filled.”

Then one came to my table

Who said, with a laughing glance,

“If that is the way you sing,

Why don’t you learn to dance?”

But I said: “With this one song

My heart and lips are cumbered—

‘The crooked cannot be made straight,

Nor that which is wanting, numbered.’

“This song must I sing,

Whatever else I covet—

Hear the end of my song,

Hear the beginning of it:

‘More bitter than death the woman

(Beside me still she stands)

Whose heart is snares and nets,

And whose hands are bands.’”