He is like the gardener's dog, who don't eat cabbage and will let no one else eat them.
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Song of the Little White Girl
Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, what is the matter?
Why are you shaking so? Why do you chatter?
Because it is just a white baby you see,
And it's the black ones you like, cabbage tree?
Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, you're a strange fellow
With your green hair and your legs browny-yellow.
Wouldn't you like to have curls, dear, like me?
What! No one to make them? O poor cabbage tree!
Never mind, cabbage tree, when I am taller,
And if you grow, please, a little bit smaller,
I shall be able by that time, bay be,
To make you the loveliest curls, cabbage tree.
poem by Katherine Mansfield
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Slug City
There once was a family of slugs
That lived in a cabbage patch town
They went out every nite to eat
Found a cabbage and began to munch down
All through the night they could reduce
A cabbage to a stalk in the ground
All night they would munch and munch
But you would never here them, not nary a sound
But Mrs H was becoming fed up
Her patch the proudest around
With malace, blood red, she schemed
She vowed to eliminate those clowns
She purchased the best poison they had
She tried every trick she read
But the slugs just kept on coming
Every nite long after it was bed
Then a local wino he said
Out of the garden he could take
These inconsiderate gluttonous
Stylommatophora pulmonates
So he began by opening a beer
Placing some into a sphere
Putting them by each cabbage head
he said, 'This will make these slugs disappear.'
But by morning the cabbage was gone
Worse yet so was the beer
And if you looked even more closely
Tiny signs saying, 'Next time make it import you here.'
poem by Midnights Voice
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It is true, I see it more often
That for the sake of a single rose
The gardener becomes the servant
To a hundred thorns
So let the gardener come
To my house
And I will teach him how to be wise.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Reply to the Above, by F.W.F.
"Te quoque vatem dicunt pastores."—VIRGIL.
O Maxwell, if by reason’s strength
And studying of Babbage,
You have transformed yourself at length
Into a mental cabbage;
And if I've proved myself a lark
At morn and blushing even,
By soaring like a music-spark
Thro’ sapphire fields of Heaven,
Our diverse fates are now reversed
By strange metempsychosis,
Into a cabbage I have burst
And scorn poetic posies;
But you a lark with twinkling wings
O’er violet-banks are soaring;
Your voice the dewy rose-cloud rings
While Statics me are boring.
Yet cabbage as I will—on earth
My roots I cannot anchor,
For at my mathematic birth
Was also born a canker!
It soon will gnaw my roots away-—
But when I weigh a chœnix
I’ll freely soar to realms of day
An emerald cabbage-Phœnix.
Then talk not of the Poll to me,
I hate, detest, and scorn it;
I am as earnest as a bee,
But savage as a hornet.
And if they pluck me I will drown
Each pedant in a sonnet,
And of their pluckings make a crown
With golden plumes upon it.
So if my cabbage growth be slow
I'll try to be a carrot,
Or still remain a lark—but know
I'll not be Poll, or Parrot.
Then if I fall beneath the mark,
I’ll shout with accent savage,
"It is a lark to be a lark,
’Tis green to be a cabbage"
poem by James Clerk Maxwell
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Talking Cabbage
A talking cabbage told me, it would prefer to be in a side salad
Than watch the news
The couch potato listless of endless media coverage
Said it would rather be mashed and squashed
Than bored by another soap
Then it changed it's mind
And said it would prefer to mingle with mayonaise and chives
The talking cabbage said it would rather be coleslaw
Than know the weather
At least it could mingle with the onion and the carrot together
The talking cabbage said
' I would rather have my own chat show than watch Jerermy Kyle'
And then thinking it was all a dream
I showed him the chopping board
SILENCE
Then the cucumber started
I decided to become A NON VEGETARIAN
But something is telling me the lamb chops are restless
The eggs are becoming quite unreasonable
Over the spilt milk
And the bread is unhappy with it's filling
Happiness never lasts!
Decided to fast
But the silence is unbearable,
Who can fill it?
So I turned on the news.......! ! ..
yvette smith
poem by Yvette Smith
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The Shepherd
He wore an old blue shirt the night that first we met,
An old and tattered cabbage-tree concealed his locks of jet;
His footsteps had a languor, his voice a husky tone;
Both man and dog were spent with toil as they slowly wandered home.
I saw him but a moment—yet methinks I see him now
While his sheep were gently feeding 'neath the rugged mountain brow.
When next we met, the old blue shirt and cabbage-tree were gone;
A brand new suit of tweed and "Doctor Dod" he had put on;
Arm in arm with him was one who strove, and not in vain,
To ease his pockets of their load by drinking real champagne.
I saw him but a moment, and he was going a pace,
Shouting nobbler after nobbler, with a smile upon his face.
When next again I saw that man his suit of tweed was gone,
The old blue shirt and cabbage-tree once more he had put on;
Slowly he trudged along the road and took the well-known track
From the station he so lately left with a swag upon his back.
I saw him but a moment as he was walking by
With two black eyes and broken nose and a tear-dropp in his eye.
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
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Unnecessary
Unnecessary,
Auntie said,
when you asked
about taking the mutt
for a walk;
he can take himself
for a walk,
in fact,
she continued
straining the cabbage,
the green water
pushing through
the stainless steel colander,
he runs,
he loves to run
all over the fields.
You knew he did,
you used to run with him,
and being that kind of mutt
he’d let you run beside him,
you being a small boy,
you being the one
who shared his bacon rinds,
you the one who filled
his water bowl
when Auntie forgot.
Sit down now,
Auntie said,
dinner is about
to be served,
and I hope
you have washed
your hands,
and she’d dish you
a large serving
of cabbage
with your meal
and she didn’t see
how that was so
unnecessary.
poem by Terry Collett
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The Song of the Garden-Toad
Down, down beneath the daisy beds,
O hear the cries of pain!
And moaning on the cinder-path
They're blind amid the rain.
Can murmurs of the worms arise
To higher hearts than mine?
I wonder if that gardener hears
Who made the mold all fine
And packed each gentle seedling down
So carefully in line?
I watched the red rose reaching up
To ask him if he heard
Those cries that stung the evening earth
Till all the rose-roots stirred.
She asked him if he felt the hate
That burned beneath them there.
She asked him if he heard the curse
Of worms in black despair.
He kissed the rose. What did it mean?
What of the rose's prayer?
Down, down where rain has never come
They fight in burning graves,
Bleeding and drinking blood
Within those venom-caves.
Blaspheming still the gardener's name,
They live and hate and go.
I wonder if the gardener heard
The rose that told him so?
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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4th Chorus Mexico City Blues
Roosevelt was worth 6, 7 million dollars
He was Tight
Frog waits
Till poor fly
Flies by
And then they got him
The pool of clear rocks
Covered with vegetable scum
Covered the rocks
Clear the pool
Covered the warm surface
Covered the lotus
Dusted the watermelon flower
Aerial the Pad
Clean queer the clear
blue water
AND THEN THEY GOT HIM
The Oil of the Olive
Bittersweet taffies
Bittersweet cabbage
Cabbage soup made right
A hunk a grass
Sauerkraut let work
in a big barrel
Stunk but Good
poem by Jack Kerouac
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0013 Pink Without Think
My friend the gardener who manages
to combine romantic or ex-romantic
with realist and fine poet and
loving gardener and teacher
and much else, harmoniously,
points out to me that the pink geranium
swinging gently in its hanging basket
in the late September sun, with
an effusive burst of flowering
which it alternates with exhausted,
barely green recovery and dry stalk,
puts on this display simply (simply!)
to attract insects to accidentally
(accidentally!) aid it to
propagate its species..
so I, who am nothing to it
except perhaps a passing Samaritan
who gives it water in a thirsty summer
and, perhaps irrelevantly, perhaps
from deeper cause,
received just now a shout
of pure pinkness from it so that
my senses thrilled, passed the message uncommented
to what seemed like my purest being,
am indeed attracted, my nature to that of it,
animal or human I’ll leave others to decide,
and from that vaguest of cosmic relevance
intend to see it through the winter
to the birth of Spring or spring of birth
with what - my gardener friend -
may well be love
poem by Michael Shepherd
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A Work of Artifice
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.
poem by Marge Piercy
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Old Town Types No.2 - Red Matt
He gleaned all the gossip and he gathered all the news,
Mad Matt, the carrier, delivering the grub;
He knew the trooper's tattle and he knew the parson's views,
The gossip at the station-yard, the gossip at the pub.
That high-pitched voice of his, the loudest voice in town,
That shrewd blue eye of his, with humor all a-gleam -
Old Red Matt, with his cabbage-tree hat,
His trolley, and his two-horse team.
Driving down the main street a-clatter with his load,
The great red beard of him blowing out behind:
'Hear about that accident's mornin' up the road?
Hear about the gold rush at Joe Scott's find?
Warmish sort o' day we got; thirsty weather this.
Got a bag o' spuds for you - Dang! Fergot the cream!'
Says old Red Matt with his cabbage-tree hat,
And his trolley, and his two-horse team.
Mad Matt, the carrier, standing at the bar:
'Well here's a go, boys. Got to get along
Seven pints I've had today and still to travel far.
Drink fast and drive fast, yeh can't go wrong.
Fill 'em up again, boss, ans hove it on the slate.
Half-a-ton aboard today - just tipped the beam,'
Says old red Matt with the cabbage-tree hat,
And his trolley, and his two-horse team.
Sudden were his wild ways, sudden, too, his end.
Jumped to grab a bolting team with kiddie sin the trap;
And they picked up Mad Matt, everybody's friend,
Silent now and broken; and they said, 'Brave chap.
Wild an' all,' they said of him, 'always was a white man.'
And they laid him, with a blessing, where his old mates dream,
Saying, 'So long, Matt, with your cabbage-tree hat,
And your trolley, and your two-horse team.'
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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The Gardener
The gardener does not love to talk,
He makes me keep the gravel walk;
And when he puts his tools away,
He locks the door and takes the key.
Away behind the currant row
Where no one else but cook may go,
Far in the plots, I see him dig
Old and serious, brown and big.
He digs the flowers, green, red and blue,
Nor wishes to be spoken to.
He digs the flowers and cuts the hay,
And never seems to want to play.
Silly gardener! summer goes,
And winter comes with pinching toes,
When in the garden bare and brown
You must lay your barrow down.
Well now, and while the summer stays
To profit by these garden days
O how much wiser you would be
To play at Indian wars with me!
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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To My Friend - Ode I
TRANSPLANT the beauteous tree!
Gardener, it gives me pain;
A happier resting-place
Its trunk deserved.
Yet the strength of its nature
To Earth's exhausting avarice,
To Air's destructive inroads,
An antidote opposed.
See how it in springtime
Coins its pale green leaves!
Their orange-fragrance
Poisons each flyblow straight.
The caterpillar's tooth
Is blunted by them;
With silv'ry hues they gleam
In the bright sunshine,
Its twigs the maiden
Fain would twine in
Her bridal-garland;
Youths its fruit are seeking.
See, the autumn cometh!
The caterpillar
Sighs to the crafty spider,--
Sighs that the tree will not fade.
Hov'ring thither
From out her yew-tree dwelling,
The gaudy foe advances
Against the kindly tree,
And cannot hurt it,
But the more artful one
Defiles with nauseous venom
Its silver leaves;
And sees with triumph
How the maiden shudders,
The youth, how mourns he,
On passing by.
Transplant the beauteous tree!
Gardener, it gives me pain;
Tree, thank the gardener
Who moves thee hence!
poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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It is not enough to have cabbage, one must have something to grease it.
Childhood Memories Four: Dances With Gravity
down the rabbit hole
of childhood memories
we tumble into lost world
watching Father chase white butterflies
which eat our growing cabbage leaves
with a tennis racket with foot work
leaps bounds serves volleys never seen
upon famed centre court at Wimbledon
butterflies fly float move in fluttering
unpredictable motion dances with gravity
overcome baiting my father into youthful
dances on past childhood hot summer days
this game I too played mastered but why
so rarely in retrospect such fun so seldom
played among a host of unpattented games
to up the stakes for mass extinction Derris
dust sprinkled on cabbage leaves discolours
leaves white butterflies land leave unabated
but knocks out the sucking and chewing
insects for a six at caterpillar dinner time
when rain has not washed powder sprinkled
off cabbage leaves alas it is a no-win game
set upon set waiting for new service white
butterflies as they fly in from neighbouring
gardens the game goes on until we tire or
new balls spread danger word signaling with
broken garden bodies in game we can't win!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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I like to get where the cabbage is cooking and catch the scents.