A WEE poem, but thought-provoking.
Helen B Cruickshank (1886-1975) wears her wryness lightly. An Angus lass, she left school at 15 to become a civil servant in London. On her return to Scotland she followed Hugh MacDiarmid as honorary secretary here of PEN, the international association of writers. Her Collected Poems (Reprographia) were published in 1971.
THE EYEBROW ASKS
One eyebrow's straight, accepting
The world as it is:
The other rises in an arch
In a perpetual quiz.
That's how thing's are. Why worry?
Says one; the other, Why
Are they like that? I'll challenge
And fight until I die.
And so the see-saw rises
And falls perpetually:
The rider on the rocking-horse,
Hamlet, you or me?
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