Ding, Dong, Bell (Anonymous)

Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?--
Little Johnny Lin.
Who pulled her out?
Dog with long snout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To drown poor pussy-cat,
Who never did any harm,
But killed the mice in his farmer's barn.

Modern version:

Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?
Little Johnny Green.
Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy Stout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To try to drown poor pussy cat,
Who ne’er did him any harm,
But killed all the mice in the farmer's barn.

Ding, Dong, Bell is a popular English language nursery rhyme.

Resistance (John Lawson)

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These fields and creeks, these woods and hills and hummocked spots,

Where rabbits crouch among the briars, none of these

Recognize their owners or the claims they stake.

They sleep, unmoving and unmoved, long winter through, and wake

To bear the tractor and the plow, the rake

In sullen silence, but connive to bring

Forth into the sun and feed

The hornet, thistle, and the rattlesnake.

Honeysuckle, yellow-green

And hostile, heaps the fences, breaks them.

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John Lawson teaches Rhetoric and Creative Writing at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. His book, Generations, was published by the St. Andrews College Press in 2007, and his poems have appeared in a variety of print and online venues. His first published play, "Playing Through," recently appeared in the online journal Public Republic.

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Winter (William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616)

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When icicles hang by the wall
---And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
---And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
---Then nightly sings the staring owl,
------------Tuwhoo!
Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

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Winter (A reading by SpokenVerse)



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When all aloud the wind doth blow,
---And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
---And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
---Then nightly sings the staring owl,
------------Tuwhoo!
Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

From Love's Labours Lost, Act V, Scene ii.

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Guest Poet: AT THE "FEDERAL CENSORSHIP AND THE ARTS" SYMPOSIUM (Bill Knott)

Just as the Nazis never proscribed Rilke
(he was no Expressionist, no Degenerate,
no Art-Bolshevik), so most of us poets
are thought no threat by those in authority—

Halfhass, for instance, his books won't get banned:
his Rilkemanqué wins awards, his "spiritual
progress" and "earned words" (—to paraphrase Wilde,
his genius gives good guru Po-Biz style while

his talent brooks those so serious ergo poems)—
what might please our fuehrers even more is
his patriot's part in The American Poetry Series.

Better silence than that? Better to hide, to write
for one's cabinet? (To paraphrase Benn,
the aristocratic form of publication.)

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[Poet's] Note: This poem was deleted from my collected comic poems by the publisher, BOA, whose chief fund-raiser at the time was Robert Hass. . . .

I've often wondered if the BOA editors censored this poem on their own
initiative, or whether they were ordered to do so by Hass.


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Admin note: I have "propagated" this poem as per Bill Knott's statement to readers:

"ALL MY POETRY, EVERY POEM I'VE WRITTEN SINCE 1960, IS POSTED [ON MY SITE] FOR OPEN ACCESS, PERUSAL AND PROPAGATION: YOU HAVE MY THANKS TO PLEASE COPY/DISTRIBUTE WHATEVER YOU LIKE."

Poem copyright Bill Knott, August 2007