1

     Fools have big wombs. For the rest?'€”here is pennyroyal if one knows to use it. But time is only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there’ll be mushrooms, fairy– ring mushrooms, in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.

2

     For what it’s worth: Jacob Louslinger, white haired, stinking, dirty bearded, cross eyed, stammer tongued, broken voiced, bent backed, ball kneed, cave bellied, mucous faced’€”deathling,'€”found lying in the weeds “up there by the cemetery.” “Looks to me as if he d been bumming around the meadows for a couple of weeks.” Shoes twisted into incredible lilies: out at the toes, heels, tops, sides, soles. Meadow flower! ha, mallow! at last I have you. (Rot dead marigolds’€”an acre at a time! Gold, are you?) Ha, clouds will touch world’s edge and the great pink mallow stand singly in the wet, topping reeds and a closet full of clothes and good shoes and my-thirty-year’s-master’s-daughter’s two cows for me to care for and a winter room with a fire in it’€”. I would rather feed pigs in Moonachie and chew calamus root and break crab’s claws at an open fire: age’s lust loose!

3

     Talk as you will, say: “No woman wants to bother with children in this country”;'€”speak of your Amsterdam and the whitest aprons and brightest doorknobs in Christendom. And I’ll answer you: "Gleaming doorknobs and scrubbed entries have heard the songs of the housemaids at sun-up and’€”housemaids are wishes. Whose? Ha! the dark canals are whistling, whistling for who will cross to the other side. If I remain with hands in pocket leaning upon my lamppost’€”why’€”I bring curses to a hag’s lips and her daughter on her arm knows better than I can tell you’€”best to blush and out with it than back beaten after.

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     In Holland at daybreak, of a fine spring morning, one sees the housemaids beating rugs before the small houses of such a city as Amsterdam, sweeping, scrubbing the low entry steps and polishing doorbells and doorknobs. By night perhaps there will be an old woman with a girl on her arm, histing and whistling across a deserted canal to some late loiterer trudging aimlessly on beneath the gas lamps.