Manning - The common man

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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Boston New York
2010

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Copyright 2010 by Maurice Manning ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. www.hmhbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Manning, Maurice, date.
The common man : poems / Maurice Manning.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-547-24961-2
1. Appalachian RegionPoetry. I. Title.
PS 3613.

A 5654 C 65 2010
811'.6dc22 2009029080 Book design by Patrick Barry
Text is set in Mercury Printed in the United States of America DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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This book is dedicated to the memory
of my grandmothers, who told me stories,
and to the Kentucky mountains,
which made those stories happen.

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Moonshine 1 The Mute 3 A Bestiary 7 A Wavering Spindle of Forsythia 9 The Pupil 10 A Prayer to God My God in a Time of Desolation 12 Three Truths, One Story 14 Hey, Sidewinder 16 A Blasphemy 20 The Old Clodhopper's Aubade 21 Ars Poetica Shaggy and Brown 23 Emptying a Rain Gauge 25 Sowing Butter Beans with a Stick 27 Dead Tree, Two Crows, Morning Fog 29 Thunderbolt, My Foot 32 The Burthen of the Mystery Indeed 37 A Panegyric Against the Consolation of Grief 38 A Wringer Washer on the Porch 40 For the Last Time, No, I'm Not the Rabbit Man 44 That Durned Ole Via Negativa 47 The Lord He Thought He'd Make a Man 49 For the Prodigal, the Morning Is a Trespass Against the Night 52 Old Negro Spiritual 55 O Stationers! 57 A Lexicon for People Who Don't Talk Too Much 59 Old-Time Preachin' on a Scripture Taken from a Tree 61 Pappy's Little Pistol 63 Sad and Alone 66 A Local Yokel's System of the Spheres 68 The Doctrine of an Ax 72 The Man Who Lived with Joy and Pain: His Own Account 74 Song of the Potato Digger 76 A Man with a Rooster in His Dream 78 The Beet's Theology 82 Oh, She's Warm! 84 The Dream of a Mountain Woman Big Enough for Me 87 Where Sadness Comes From 89 Giddyup, Ye Banties! 91 The Common Man 93 Acknowledgments 99

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They were a man's words, a ballad of an old time
Sung among green blades, whistled atop a hill. JAMES STILL The older boy said, Take ye a slash
o' thishit'll make yore sticker peck out which would have been a more profound
effect than putting hair on my chest, to which I was already accustomed.
Proverbially, of course, he was right. I took a slash, another, and then
I felt an impassioned swelling, though between my ears, as they say, a hot
illumination in my brain. The shine had not been cut; full of
the moon it was for sure. I knew the mountain county it came from
my family's section, on Little Goose. A distant cousin would have been proud
to know another cousin was drinking what might as well be blood, at least
the bonds that come with blood, the laugh before the tragic truth, the love
of certain women, the hate for lies, the knowledge that death can be a mercy,
the vision blurred and burning there in the mind and in the wounded heart.
This was the first time I heard the story I was born to tell, the first I knew
that I was in the story, too. If you go up the holler far
enough you'll spy a little house half-hidden in the trees.

It's dark
up there all day and when the night comes down it's darker yet. There's two
old brothers living in that house and the younger one is fatter than
a tick with lies and sassy tales. One time, a bear came through and ate
a couple dozen pawpaws these brothers had shaken from the tree and left
lined up on the porch rail to ripen, and Murdock, their good-for-nothing dog
who had retired to the porch on account of all the work he'd done that day,
never so much as growled nor raised an eye. The brothers were tending to
the pole beans in the garden patch and once the bear had slunk away
both brothers said at once: Why, shoot an' H-E-double-toothpicks, Murdock!
And then the younger one said: Jinx. And the older brother spit in the dirt.
According to the younger one who couldn't hold his belly still
from all the laughter he'd provoked it was about a year and a half
before he let his brother speak, but then it didn't last too long
on account of Murdock treed a woman. She'd come up there to see how poor
these brothers were and if they needed some religious reading material.
She called hello, then Murdock woofed his woof as fierce as he could be,
and she shinnied up the pawpaw tree and hollered: Help! Ole Murdock, well,
he never left the porch.

The brothers were digging a privy hole behind
the house and when the woman hollered, they came running around and six feet off
the ground this pretty red-haired woman was trembling in the pawpaw tree,
and the poor thing's skirt had gotten bunched around her thighs as she was climbing up
this otherwise respectable woman came near to blinding the brothers right there,
her bloomers were so bright. Now, it took a moment or two before the brothers
could gather their wits, but once they did they tried to look concerned and turned
to the porch and said in a single voice: You son-of-a-biscuit-eater, Murdock,
you've done scared this young gal halfway out of her drawers! The younger brother grinned,
and jinxed the older one again. Because I jinxed him! he told me one day
when I asked why I'd never heard the older brother speak. How long
has he been jinxed? I asked. Lord, years! he said, and I don't reckon he
remembers how to speak, and it's been so long, I've plumb forgot his name;
I can't take back the jinx no more. Now remember what I saidthis man
is fatter than a junebug with lies and he can spread them pretty thick,
though I've never minded listening.

Many a time I've stopped up there
to visit and every time it seems the younger brother has just been waiting.
What's the good word? he always asks. Yes, many a time I've stopped up there,
but I've never seen a pawpaw tree. Lord knows what became of that young woman
or if she continued her ministry; and one day ole Murdock went to Heaven
why, even a bad dog gets to go.

The reason the woman was fond of chickens,
according to another woman I overheard while mulling over
the scale with an ounce of turnip seed hung in its crawand whose opinion
was beyond disputethe reason why? Well, she was raised up with a rooster.
And that was that, the old nature versus nurture debate resolved
in favor of the nurture, but let's not leave the nature out. Clearly,
the woman came from people who knew their child should be acquainted with
the big ideas, one of which, that's right, is happiness, and roosters,
though prone to swings of mood and squabble, are happy in the main. I knew
a woman raised up with a goat.

She couldn't read, but I don't think
it was related to the goat. Though goats can sway a person, it's true,
and would rather eat a book than read it, a goat won't hold you back. Were you
raised up with a beast beside you? I mean a serious beast. Well, if you were,
you know you never owned it. Did you ever give your thumb to a calf
and feel how hard it pulls, and feel the pulling pull you? I don't care
if it has spurs or horns, a beast will raise you up, and if you don't think
you need to be raised up, I'm afraid it doesn't matter what you read;

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