The Men that Don’t Fit In: By Robert W. Service

Every now and then I read a poem that I love. Sometimes I read poems that bore me. Sometimes I read poems that are so incredibly lousy it makes me wish that I couldn’t understand English. But other times I read poems that totally resonate. This is one of them. “The Men That Don’t Fit In”, by Robert W. Service is a stellar portrait of that wayfaring soul that I’ve always related too. It’s full of a sense of mad abandon in a man’s quest for “the next big thing.” But what really struck me about this poem lies in the final lines of the last stanza.

“He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.”

He’s a rolling stone! I have done a little research regarding this popular phrase. According to Wikipedia, “The conventional English translation appeared in John Heywood’s collection of Proverbs in 1546. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable also credits Erasmus, and relates it to other Latin proverbs, Planta quae saepius transfertus non coalescit, or Saepius plantata arbor fructum profert exiguum, which mean that a frequently replanted plant or tree (respectively) yields little fruit. It appears that the original intent of the proverb saw the growth of moss as desirable, and that the intent was to condemn mobility as unprofitable.
The contemporary interpretation of equating moss to undesirable stagnation has turned the traditional understanding on its head: Erasmus’s proverb gave the name “rolling stone” to people who are agile (mobile) and never get rusty due to constant motion.”

In music we have heard it over and over again from James Brown to Don McLean; Muddy Waters to Hank Williams, and obviously, THE Rolling Stones! This might be an overlooked “first use” of the term in American History as relating it to a wandering, gypsy-hearted man. I’ve always attributed its first use to the Muddy Waters reference in the tune, “Rollin Stone.” But you know, I guess he had to get it from somewhere. Also according to Wikipedia, the earliest recorded reference in American Culture is: The union activist Joe Hill’s last will, written in the form of a song in 1915 states: “My kin don’t need to fuss and moan, Moss does not cling to rolling stone.” But I can’t find any other references attributing the term “a rolling stone” to a person. For example, HE is a rolling stone.

So buried in the final lines of this trite little poem, a phrase and an attributed meaning that may well have influenced the entire soul of American Music, from Blues to Country to Folk to Rock and Roll.

See, poets ARE cool! Heck, they may be the great grand-daddy of cool.

Enjoy.

The Men that Don’t Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far,
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

“My Madonna” a poem by Robert W. Service

Picked up a new book from the book store two nights ago. Actually I picked up two. Really and truly I have been reading way more poetry than I’ve been writing as of late. It all started on Father’s Day when my lovely wife, Suzanne bought me a complete collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings. After I read that, yes all of it! – I began on a collection of Edgar Allen Poe short stories. All of which are amazing. So all the while I have also been reading through Shakespeare’s sonnets. So I picked up this queer little book entitled, “The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems” by Robert W. Service – and another book that I will mention later. These poems are very rugged, to say the least. He was a turn of the century, self-made mountain man, gold miner, hunter, trader, adventurer of Southwestern Canada and the Northwestern US.

Each poem is like a little piece of time travel. That’s really the beauty of poetry. It has the ability to take you back to that very sparse moment that the poet experienced. A true poet can capture both massive and microscopic events and portray them in words with the same vibrancy and grandeur. One man writes about the tragedy of Gettysburg, while the other muses on the delicate way Autumn’s first leaf touches the ground. This is why I love poetry. All moments, both large and small can be captured the same.

The following poem is one I picked out for its sweet cynicism and poignant humor. Hope you enjoy it too.

My Madonna – by Robert W. Service

I haled me a woman from the street,
Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
I bade her sit in the model’s seat
And I painted her sitting there.

I hid all trace of her heart unclean;
I painted a babe at her breast;
I painted her as she might have been
If the Worst had been the Best.

She laughed at my picture and went away.
Then came, with a knowing nod,
A connoisseur, and I heard him say;
“‘Tis Mary, the Mother of God.”

So I painted a halo round her hair,
And I sold her and took my fee,
And she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire,
Where you and all may see.

Menace and the afterthought

there is
a pitfall
in all men

a menace
and an
afterthought

fear would
seek to
grip the throat

but hope stays
the weary heart

youth touches
– with great
ignorance -
the flames
of wrath
yet endure
unscathed
and unburned

while the
old men
die utterly
burned fully
in the
furnaces of
wisdom.

bourbon street quip

Piss and bourbon,
Étouffée and sin,
Sex and sweat,
Beer and midnight melodies,
Fat-Man Delta blues and stilettos,
Voodoo and cobblestones,
Fishnet call-girls and wrought iron,
Waft through dim alleys;
Mix and melt into a
Molten, bitter root
Mouthwash for the Soul.

marriage and the lady in red

at the first stretches
of September’s gloaming
i recall a time before

when brunette hair sparkled
of youth and wobbly ankles
pressed lightly against

red stilettos. crooning
melodies trace against the
contours of my memory, singing

freely in my heart, “And I have never
seen that dress you’re wearing,
Or the highlights in your
hair that catch your eyes,
I have been blind…”

no one who was there that day
will forget the blood red dress
you wore ‘neath the single

spotlight. some wordless Italian
aria leapt from your throat
as clouds leap from mountains;

sustained, reverberated through
every living heart in the hall,
leaving no room for any emotion,

save love or awe. as the hem of
your gown lilted against the
old wooden floorboards, i knew

in a single moment that you would
bear me up against any trial, that
my loneliness would sprout into

a brood of one plus you, that
kisses would become candy and
mere fucking would evolve into

sex, dreamlike yet tangible. that
souls rent would be forever,
mended.