A few weeks ago I checked out of the local library A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker 1925-2025. The 980 pages of poems make it too heavy for bedtime reading! I promise I will not be using it as my only source for new poems. As I turned the pages a poem by James Thurber caught my eye – Villanelle of Horatio Street, Manhattan. Sometimes it is just good to find a poem that is a pleasure to read without consequences. One brief note though regarding the form of the poem – Villanelle – is a 19 line poem made up of five three line stanzas and one four line stanza. The first and third lines of the first stanza repeat alternatively in each verse and combine as the last 2 lines at the end! A tricky poem to write but a pleasure to read. Sometimes a poem is an escape from the hayhem and chaos all around us. Enjoy!
Villanelle of Horatio Street, Manhattan
Rusted bed-springs in the street
And rowdy kids that fight and yell,
All in a clutter at your feet.
No matter what the hour, you meet
Brawling children and, as well,
Rusted bed-springs in the street;
Nothing here is clean and neat,
What you’ll find you can’t foretell
All in a clutter at your feet—
Tawdry signs of life’s defeat:
Irate voices, supper smell,
Rusted bed-springs in the street,
A broken keg, a buggy seat—
Stuff that junkmen buy and sell—
All in a clutter at your feet.
If your eyes lift up to greet
The stars you fall on, sure as hell,
Rusted bed-springs in the street,
All in a clutter at your feet. James Thurber (The New Yorker, February 19,1927)
Prayer:
We come to you with our praise and our prayer
O God of all life and love
We sing and whisper your grace and your goodness
O God of all kindness and mercy
You call us to life and love today
We come to you with our praise and our prayer
As nature bears testimony to your creation
And as birds sing and dogs bark so
We sing and whisper your grace and your goodness
As the mountains rise high
and as the oceans run deep
We come to you with our praise and our prayer
As waves wrestle at the edge of the land and
As wind gathers clouds like a blanket
We sing and whisper your grace and your goodness
We marvel at the grandeur of your creation
We lift our hearts and bow our heads and
We come to you with our praise and our prayer
We sing and whisper your grace and your goodness. Amen.
Prayers, Poems, and Christian Ponderings 
Doesn’t he describe a New York City back alley perfectly! I do wonder however, how many young people know what bed springs are?
I love Thurber, grew up with him and his cartoons via my parents’ New Yorkers stacked up around the house. I have a small silver brooch with his iconic dog on it, and my most beloved childhood book as well as that of my children is Thurber’s Many Moons.
Thanks for the poem, the beautiful prayer and the memory of jumping on a bed that had actual springs. As my mother would remind me, that’s not a trampoline you know!
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