June Twenty, Three Days After

By Miller Williams b. 1930 Miller Williams

When I was a boy and a man would die

we’d say a verse when the hearse went by

one car two car three car four

someone knocking on the devil’s door.

I smoked all night myself awake

and saw the lights and the day break.

When the sun was done with the final star

I left the house and the door ajar

and went to the church. The father was nice

but the holy water was cold as ice.

I found a friend and felt his hand

fall through mine like crumbling sand.

I went to hear the talk in the square

but there were headless people there.

I turned to the clock for the time of day

but the hole in the wall had nothing to say.

Callous of heaven and careless of hell

you knew something you didn’t tell.

The soul you said was only fear,

and heaven, well heaven at best was here.

So heaven is gone if that was it

and the soul lies there in the private pit

but hell is big and hell is a bone

and hell comes in from the edge of alone.

Hell is a dead girl who walks through the town

and hunts for my bed to lay herself down.

Source: Some Jazz a While (1999)

Biography

Poet, editor, critic, and translator Miller Williams was born in Hoxie, Arkansas in 1930, the son of a Methodist clergyman and civil rights activist. Though he entered college as double major in English and foreign languages, an aptitude test revealed “absolutely no aptitude in the handling of words,” Miller has said in interviews. He changed his major to hard sciences to avoid “embarrassing my parents.” Williams received a BS . . .

Continue reading this biography