The Carpentered Hen Read online

  Leaves fall, and thus unveil the sky;

  But now the birdbath is bone dry.

  COG

  No, not for him the darkly planned

  Ambiguities of flesh.

  His maker gave him one command:

  Mesh.

  DOLLY

  Along the upland meadows

  of the dining-table bloom

  the doilies, openfaced and

  white; within the living-room

  they cling to every slope of

  chair, and dot each teak plateau.

  Around the trunks of lamps whose

  shades exude a healthy glow,

  the doilies spread their petals

  tinted ivory and cream.

  Hands off! Who plucks a doily

  bothers Mother’s farflung scheme.

  EASY CHAIR

  Avoid the clicking three-way lamp; beware

  The throw rug’s coils, the two-faced sofabed,

  The vile lowboy; but more than any, dread

  The hippopotomastic easy chair.

  For, seated, you shall sink and never rise.

  The slow osmosis of the chair’s embrace

  Shall make your arms its arms, and make your face

  An antimacassar monogrammed with eyes.

  FLOWERPOT

  GERANIUM

  This clayey fez,

  Who has this home?

  inverted, is

  Geranium,

  a shoe for roots:

  a maiden plant

  an orange boot

  and aspirant

  wherein one leg

  to broader green.

  goes down to beg

  Against the screen

  more dirt. Alas,

  she leans her head,

  in vain it asks.

  inhibited.

  More Dirt (the moral runs) Or Else We Wane—See D. H. Lawrence, Ovid, or Mark Twain.

  HAIRBRUSH

  Made of hair,

  it brushes locks

  of hair:

  and there,

  my son,

  you have a Chinese paradox,

  but not much of one.

  ICEBOX

  In Daddy’s day there were such things:

  Wood cabinets of cool

  In which a cake of ice was placed

  While he was off at school.

  Blue-veined, partitioned in itself,

  The cake seemed cut of air

  Which had exploded; one cracked star

  Appeared imprisoned there.

  It melted slowly through the day;

  The metal slats beneath

  Seeped upwards, so the slippery base

  Developed downward teeth.

  Eventually an egg so small

  It could be tossed away,

  The ice cake vanished quite, as has

  That rather distant day.

  JACK

  A card, a toy, a hoist,

  a flag, a stay, a fruit,

  a sailor, John, a pot,

  a rabbit, knife, and boot;

  o’-lantern, in-the-box

  or -pulpit, Ketch, a daw,

  a-dandy, of-all-trades,

  anapes, an ass, a straw.

  KNOB

  Conceptually a blob,

  the knob

  is a smallish object which,

  hitched

  to a larger,

  acts as verger.

  It enables

  us to gain access to drawers in end tables;

  it shepherds

  us into cupboards.

  LETTER SLOT

  Once each day this broad mouth spews

  Love letters, bills, ads, pleas, and news.

  MIRROR

  NUTCRACKER

  His teeth are part of his shoulders because

  A nut

  Is broken best by arms that serve as jaws.

  OTTOMAN

  Lessons in history: the Greeks

  Were once more civilized than Swedes.

  Iranians were, for several weeks,

  Invincible, as Medes.

  The mild Mongolians, on a spree,

  Beheaded half of Asia; and

  The Arabs, in their century,

  Subdued a world of sand.

  Just so, the cushioned stool we deign

  To sit on, called the Ottoman:

  We would not dare, were this the reign

  Of Sultan Selim Khan.

  From India to Hungary

  The Ottoman held sway; his scope

  Extended well into the sea

  And terrified the Pope.

  And Bulgar, Mameluke, and Moor

  All hastened to kowtow

  To tasselled bits of furniture.

  It seems fantastic now.

  QUILT

  The quilt that covers all of us, to date,

  Has patches numbered 1 to 48,

  Five northern rents, a crooked central seam,

  A ragged eastern edge, a way

  Of bunching uglily, and a

  Perhaps too energetic color scheme.

  Though shaken every twenty years, this fine

  Old quilt was never beaten on the line.

  It took long making. Generations passed

  While thread was sought, and calico

  And silk were coaxed from Mexico

  And France. The biggest squares were added last.

  Don’t kick your covers, son. The bed is built

  So you can never shake the clinging quilt

  That blanketed your birth and tries to keep

  Your waking warm, impalpable

  As atmosphere. As earth it shall

  Be tucked about you through your longest sleep.

  RAINSPOUT

  Up the house’s nether corner,

  Snaky-skilled, the burglar shinnies,

  Peeking, cautious, in the dormer,

  Creeping, wary, where the tin is.

  Stealthily he starts to burgle.

  Hear his underhanded mutter;

  Hear him, with a guilty gurgle,

  Pour his loot into the gutter.

  STOPPER

  Take instead the honest stopper,

  Crying “Halt!” to running water,

  Chained to duty, as is proper

  For a piece of rubber mortar.

  Dense resistance is the raison

  D’ětre of this dull sentry; certes

  He shall hold the brimming basin

  Even after water dirties.

  TRIVET

  “What is it? Why?” Thus the trivet,

  Like a piece of algebra,

  Embraces mysteries which give it

  Quelque chose, je ne sais quoi.

  UMBRELLA

  Pterodactylic complement

  Of black and evil weather,

  It lifts on ribbing badly bent

  One wing without a feather.

  Don’t treat it as a cane. Don’t poke

  The end at friends; you’re liable

  To give offense. Don’t stick a spoke

  In anybody’s eyeball.

  Don’t open it indoors, your great-

  Grandmother used to scold me;

  What all befell who disobeyed

  The good soul never told me.

  Unfurl it when the heavens burst,

  And hold it over ladies.

  On better days, hands off; accurst,

  The bird was hatched in Hades.

  VACUUM CLEANER

  This baggy broom,

  Its hum is doom.

  Its stern caress

  Is nothingness.

  WHEEL

  For all of his undoubted skill

  The Inca lacked the wheel until

  Pizarro came to high Peru

  And said that llamas wouldn’t do.

  The Eskimos had never heard

  Of centripetal force when Byrd

  Bicycled up onto a floe

  And told them, “This how white man go.”

  Nepal’
s Joe Averageperson feels

  He should get by on prayer wheels.

  The Navajos retread their squaws.

  So lucky, lucky you, because

  Whereas, below the pyramids

  In Africa, some hominids

  Have waited since the Pliocene,

  You’ll get the wheel at age sixteen.

  XYSTER

  “An instrument for scraping bones”

  Describes the knife.

  The word is rarely used—but why?

  What else is life?

  YARDSTICK

  ZEPPELIN

  A German specialty, since men

  Of other nations must inveigle

  Helium or hydrogen;

  But Germany had Hegel.

  It fell, as do Philosophy’s

  Symmetric, portly darlings,

  Fell down from skies where one still sees

  Religion’s narrow starlings.

  A Note About the Author

  John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.

  Books by John Updike

  POEMS

  The Carpentered Hen (1958) • Telephone Poles (1963) • Midpoint (1969) • Tossing and Turning (1977) • Facing Nature (1985) • Collected Poems 1953–1993 • Americana (2001) • Endpoint (2009)

  NOVELS

  The Poorhouse Fair (1959) • Rabbit, Run (1960) • The Centaur (1963) • Of the Farm (1965) • Couples (1968) • Rabbit Redux (1971) • A Month of Sundays (1975) • Marry Me (1976) • The Coup (1978) • Rabbit Is Rich (1981) • The Witches of Eastwick (1984) • Roger’s Version (1986) • S. (1988) • Rabbit at Rest (1990) • Memories of the Ford Administration (1992) • Brazil (1994) • In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) • Toward the End of Time (1997) • Gertrude and Claudius (2000) • Seek My Face (2002) • Villages (2004) • Terrorist (2006) • The Widows of Eastwick (2008)

  SHORT STORIES

  The Same Door (1959) • Pigeon Feathers (1962) • Olinger Stories (a selection, 1964) • The Music School (1966) • Bech: A Book (1970) • Museums and Women (1972) • Problems and Other Stories (1979) • Too Far to Go (a selection, 1979) • Bech Is Back (1982) • Trust Me (1987) • The Afterlife (1994) • Bech at Bay (1998) • Licks of Love (2000) • The Complete Henry Bech (2001) • The Early Stories: 1953–1975 (2003) • My Father’s Tears (2009) • The Maple Stories (2009)

  ESSAYS AND CRITICISM

  Assorted Prose (1965) • Picked-Up Pieces (1975) • Hugging the Shore (1983) • Just Looking (1989) • Odd Jobs (1991) • Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf (1996) • More Matter (1999) • Still Looking (2005) • Due Considerations (2007) • Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu (2010) • Higher Gossip (2011)

  PLAY

  Buchanan Dying (1974)

  MEMOIRS

  Self-Consciousness (1989)

  CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  The Magic Flute (1962) • The Ring (1964) • A Child’s Calendar (1965) • Bottom’s Dream (1969) • A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects (1996)