A Poem by Camille Ralphs

On May Day (Massachusetts, 1627)

Better harrowed, cotton-pale, than barrowed;
Better paradise’s O vocabulary than a wilderness’s errand,

Flocks of red cloud, the voluminous silver fever
of the sea. More wisdom’s pearls than pearl-divers’,

Better this earned black nectar—melancholy—
Than a merry shimmying around a mast of pine. No folly,

Wool and vulgar; just the myriad geometries of salt,
Hard, runic. So: no culture but the corn belt,

Butcher but the small white lamb.
More scold and bridle than the birth of one slippery iamb

In the knee and winnow, in the barnlike sun.
Much better the mossy velvet of the quern-stone

Turning than mirth’s sugarcane, 10,000 idle finger-bones,
The Devil’s . . . Better anathema than Canaan.

More our botch of a blue-blotched harvest,
Dog-eared grain, than locals’ teeming tenderness,

And better New World than the last flare of Old England,
That hump, bloodshot, they call Merrymount—

Best put the tin Phrygian hats on dancing
Candles, dim the fire’s anatomy, kindling of things;

Best not to gather scuppernongs, the supper of the sots . . .
Best not imagine it. Not. Better not.

Camille Ralphs has two published pamphlets, Malkin: An ellegy in 14 spels (The Emma Press, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award, and uplifts & chains (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2020). She is poetry editor at the Times Literary Supplement.