Selections from Trella Romine's library at Terradise Nature Center
Ray Romine Poems
How much longer will the Germans take
To get a belly-full of stomach-ache?
**********************
Can there be a German who’s never seethed
To the point where he to himself has breathed:
“Gosh, Adolph, but you’re a WORM?”?
by Ray Romine Monday, July 26, 1943
Engrossed in what he thought or saw
That others never see,
He found the time he needed for
Inspiring you end me.
The shock is doubly harrowing
For all his friends to find
An intellect like his can pass
Like any other mind.
by Ray Romine Monday, October 14, 1946
This volume is a relic of the past.
It sags a little tiredly from long-kept
And weighty knowledge painfully amassed
And guarded while the generations slept
Not much aware, nor caring. Book shops sold
And then acquired it, back and forth,
The silver words exchanged for dressy gold
Without an intimation of true worth.
There on my shelf this tattered tome commands
Respect although its yellowed pages now
Get not a passing glance. Who understands,
When we ignore the writer’s message, how
Two words, a hackneyed trite expression such
As “First Edition” can be worth so much?
by Ray Romine Tuesday, November 27, 1951
You may think: you have done everything under the sun
that’s immoral,
Like running a red light, or taking out someone else’s
goral,
Or carrying matches,
But have you, when they at last aren’t worth any more
patches,
Been forced to toss in the rag-bag your last pair of
pajamas
And have to sleep so that your conscience goes after
you with tongs and hammas?
Surely no one ever felt less unexposed than I without
my pajama pants, sir–
No, not even a nudist or an artist’s model or a dyedin-
the-flesh fan-dantsir.
There is something I can’t explain, quite
About this being unclothed in the night;
It may be true I can’t be seen; yet if the walls have
ears,
May not the pictures on my walls have eyes, and the
eyes have jeers?
I fear so, and though you prate that what matters it
once I get to sleep?–
I reply that I can dream can’t I–and still feel cheap?
And I maintain there is nothing so degrading as gallopping
about in nightmares
If one must be always stealing things off clothes lines
so as to dodge peoples’ stares.
I would even settle for having a suit that made me look
like Gen. Homma,
If only some kind soul would sell or will me a pair,
or even a single, pajomma!
by Ray Romine Friday, August 2, 1946
Sometimes, I think, we all are filled with awe
When we examine lives of better men
And ponder on their greatness, for just when
In any life is there the time to draw
From every well of knowledge? What they saw
And heard in books and nature must have been
The meat of their existence; and the pen
Each wielded was a fount of changing law
For after-ones to see, too, overthrown
With new-discovered facts. Yet, some there are
Who, seeing Hebrew history outgrown,
The Great and their achievements great would bar
From thought, from schools They let their fierce pride sting
Their fairness, while they mouth, “Let Freedom Ring”!
by Ray Romine Friday, December 7, 1945
Did you ever raise a mustache?
What I mean is–did you try?
If it grew up into manhood
You’re a better man than I.
For my grandma raised the dickens–
Then my aunt she jumped on me,
And the things they called that mustache
Aren’t fit to print, you see.
“Fuzz upon the upper lip” and
“Dirty spot upon your face”
“Brush pile”,”mole”, & “misplaced eyebrow”
(Naming some not quite so base)
But I grinned & took it meekly
Til one day my wife declared,
“I am going home to mother
Til your upper lip you’ve bared.”
I gave up and so my mustache
Finally met its Weterloo
When I took the razor to it–
What the heck else could I do?
If you want to raise a mustache
Best prepare then for the worst:
Take advice from one who tried it–
Make yourself a hermit first!
by Ray Romine Friday, September 13, 1935
“King of Extremes”, I should like to crown one-
There’s either a drouth, or else they drown one.
by Ray Romine Friday, April 7, 1950
A poet sat beneath a tree,
A pad and pencil on his knee,
And nothing, though he pondered long,
Came from his Muse in way of song,
“It has in truth been said sometime–
No matter what great thought sublime–
No new thing is in earth or sky;
The sleeping dogs let lie shall I”.
Ten times ten thousand verses on
The stars, the elm, the well-kept lawn–
The common things about us all–
Can never on our senses pall:
The things we know, we like to heer;
The old tunes still sound good this year.
So poet, wrestle with thy trade–
And say it, though it has been said!
by Ray Romine Thursday, January 1, 1942
Confined within iced winter walls,
My spirit still has days it sings,
Consoled by sight of Floral shops,
And memories of other springs.
by Ray Romine Sunday, February 8, 1953
A red and yellow flower
Every day
Bloomed its heart out,
And no one noticed
Passing that way.
But after it was dead,
“It was pretty,” one man said.
A lamppost stood
In a neighborhood,
And thought it rotten
To be forgotten.
But one night for a lark
Two boys threw stones.
“My, but it’s dark,”
I heard a woman remark.
So keep your light shining
A number of ways,
And someone will miss it
–One of these days.
by Ray Romine Tuesday, July 3, 1945