“down in albuquerque way where the desert is dry / she called me a name and she spit in my eye”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, another from Puck of Pook’s Hill (which also has “Harp-Song of the Danish Women,” a previous PM):

Prophets at Home, Rudyard Kipling

Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
    Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
    Nature-ally hold ’em in scorn.

When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
    They make a won’erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
    But O, ’tis won’erful good for the Prophet!

There’s nothing Nineveh Town can give
    (Nor being swallowed by whales between),
Makes up for the place where a man’s folk live,
    Which don’t care nothing what he has been.
He might ha’ been that, or he might ha’ been this,
But they love and they hate him for what he is.


One of Kipling’s few sonnets, though with an unconventional meter. First published in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) without a title, as the headnote to “Hal o’ the Draft.” For the opening, see Mark 6:1-6 and Luke 4:16-24, and for Nineveh and being swallowed, see the book of Jonah.

---L.

Subject quote from Cowboy Rumba, Ned Sublette.