Words
Alden
Nowlan said
he could
confess to murder in a poem.
He, from
a paper-shacked small town
where
raccoons come out at night
where a
black bear is the only enemy,
never
lived in the middle east.
Aldan Nowlan was a noted 20th-century Canadian writer. He dropped out of school after 4th grade and began a career at hard labor. But at 16 he discovered the regional library in Nova Scotia and began walking or hitching the 18-mile-each way trip from his home to the books every weekend. "I wrote (and read) in secret, My father would as soon have sen me wear lipstick." Lying on his resume, he got a job on a newspaper at 19 and began writing poetry. He became one of Canada's most respected authors before his death in 1983.
ReplyDelete"Fair Warning" by Aldan Nowlan
ReplyDeleteI keep a lunatic chained
to a beam in the attic. He
is my twin brother whom
I'm trying to cheat
out of his inheritance.
It's all right for me
to tell you this because
you won't believe it.
Nobody believes anything
that's put in a poem.
I could confess to
murder and as long as
I did it in a verse
there's not a court
that would convict me.
So if you're ever
a guest overnight
in my house, don't
go looking for
the source of any
unusual sounds.
I love this poem
ReplyDelete