Due east it’s blown
Since your mother died. She barely outlived my coming;
And never saw a grandchild. I wonder ... Yet,
I spared her all I could. Ay, that was it:
She couldn’t abide to watch me trying to spare her,
Another woman doing her work, finoodling
At jobs she’d do so smartly, tidying her hearth,
Using her oven, washing her cups and saucers,
Scouring her tables, redding up her rooms,
Handling her treasures, and wearing out her gear.
And now, another, wringing out my dishclout,
And going about my jobs in her own fashion;
Turning my household, likely, howthery-towthery,
While I sit mum. But it takes forty years’
Steady east wind to teach some folk; and then
They’re overdried to profit by their learning.
And so, without a complaint, and keeping her secrets,
Your mother died with patient, quizzical eyes,
Half-pitying, fixed on mine; and dying, left
Krindlesyke and its gear to its new mistress.
Ezra:
A woman, she was. You’ve never had her hand
At farls and bannocks; and her singing-hinnies
Fair melted in the mouth—not sad and soggy
As yours are like to be. She’d no habnab
And hitty-missy ways; and she’d turn to,
At shearing-time, and clip with any man.
She never spared herself.
Eliza:
And died at forty,
As white and worn as an old table-cloth,
Darned, washed, and ironed to a shred of cobweb,
Past mending; while your father was sixty-nine
Before he could finish himself, soak as he might.
Ezra:
Don’t you abuse my father. A man, he was—
No fonder of his glass than a man should be.
Few like him now: I’ve not his guts, and Jim’s
Just a lamb’s head, gets half-cocked on a thimble,
And mortal, swilling an eggcupful; a gill
Would send him randy, reeling to the gallows.
Dad was the boy! Got through three bottles a day,
And never turned a hair, when his own master,
Before we’d to quit Rawridge, because the dandy
Had put himself outside of all his money—
Teeming it down his throat in liquid gold,
Swallowing stock and plenishing, gear and graith.
A bull-trout’s gape and a salamander thrapple—
A man, and no mistake!
Eliza:
A man; and so,
She died; and since your mother was carried out,
Hardly a woman’s crossed the threshold, and none
Has slept the night at Krindlesyke. Forty-year,
With none but men! They’ve kept me at it; and now
Jim’s bride’s to take the work from my hands, and do
Things over that I’ve done over for forty-year,
Since I took them from your mother—things some woman’s
Been doing at Krindlesyke since the first bride
Came home.
Ezra: