And We Provided Frances Crammer Greenman with a Model

The telephone rang in the Newspaper Room. It was
Francis Crammer Greenman. A friend had just called
from the Library to tell her
that a type she had been looking for for a picture
was sitting in the Newspaper Room.
It was an old man with a beard.

Would the assistant hold him until she got there —
she was six blocks away?
The man had left.
But they thought he had gone to the Magazine Room.
The call was transferred: the man was found
by Reference in our room.
He stayed. She came.
They left together.



From the Daily Happenings log of the New York Public Library Reference Room, June 1952. Submitted by John FitzGerald.

A Life's Parallels

Never on this side of the grave again.
Christina Rossetti

Synthetic coconut shies.
Whiskers absurdly long.

Give the show away.
Everything tawdry and shoddy.

Was it always so?
Were they as cheap looking
in one’s youth when one loved it all?

Does one get fastidious as one grows
older and the fair
always was rowdy
and dirty
and unappealing?

As we came away,
all Himself said was:
“Our poor park,
how untidy it is.”




Diary of a Sheffield housewife, August 1942. Diarist 5447 in the Mass Observation Project. Submitted by B.T. Joy.

One drink too many

The other night,
as I was coming home in the dark,
I saw a strange ungainly thing in front of me;
then when I drew closer I saw that it was
a man giving a piggy-back to a woman.
They lurched a little…
I overtook them and left them
piggy-backing in the country lane.



The diary entry of Denton Welch, 22 October 1943, from The Faber Book of Diaries, ed. Simon Brett (London, 1987). Submitted by Neal.

Growth of a Poet's Mind

We had hurried to the shelter of the alders
alongside the river Derwent, as dark clouds
drifted across the sun and a rain squall
swept through the valley. It passed in minutes,
soon followed by shafts of sunlight that pierced
ever-widening gaps between clouds whose
racing shadows traced the contours of the fellside.

As the wind subsided, the descending scales
of willow warbler song began again
and bumblebees emerged from shelter to feed,
shaking raindrops from the last of the bluebells
and newly opened wood crane's-bill flowers,
a floral succession that marks the transition
from spring into summer in these woodlands.

Down at our feet a male ghost moth had emerged
from a brown chrysalis half-buried in the soil –
not without struggle judging by the damage
to one of its wings that had still not fully
expanded. It took its first uncertain
steps across wet grass towards the bracken
fronds, where it would remain until nightfall.

Ghost moths are unusual in engaging
in communal courtship displays at dusk,
drawn together in leks by emitting
come-hither scents that are reminiscent
of the aroma of goats. They hover
just above the vegetation, swaying from side
to side as if dangling on the end of a string.




From Country Diary: Blanchland, by Phil Gates in The Guardian. A few words removed for scansion: 'a' (line 17); 'shelter of' (20); 'of a dozen of more' (24); and 'said to be' (25). Submitted by Gabriel Smy.