How Many Roads? (part 2 of 3)

How many roads must a man walk down
If a man must walk down roads?
Yes, and how much wood could a woodchuck chuck
And the building still meet code?
And how much load can the bear beams bear
Before they just implode?

The flanges are bent, not going to the rim.
The flanges are going in the bin.

Yes, and how many chickens must cross those roads
Just to get to the other side?
And does it depend on the length of the road?
Or is it about how wide?
Yes, and how many chickens, woodchucks, and men
Are on the road to St. Ives?

The dancers I sent are going to the gym,
The dancers are going to the gym.

Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? 11. Seamus Heaney

Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Seamus Heaney:

Husbandry says “Stay safe
on this side of the street.”
But once in a while
a chicken will rise to her feet
(if she’s not met defeat)
and see that the other side
is reachable from here.
Now she comes near.

[Click here to read an excerpt from The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney]

Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? Part 9: Edgar Allan Poe

 

 

Why, I wonder, do you reckon that this bird would come here pecking?
What strange sound incited her to pick the henhouse lock?
Did she cross for country, hip-hop, bluegrass, jazz, or rock?
Quoth the chicken: “Bach.”

Poets Answer an Age-Old Question: Leonard Cohen on why the chicken crossed the road

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

LEONARD COHEN:
I saw you on the other side
And crossed the road—it wasn’t wide,
But I’d’ve crossed a 6-lane highway to ya.
Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo-yeah
Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doooo, yeah.

 

Happy birthday to Leonard Cohen, who would have been 86 today.

Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? Maya Angelou

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Maya Angelou:
You can put me in the barnyard
With your pigs and cows and ducks,
You can tell me I should stay there–
“I’ve got places to go,” I clucks.

Oddly, I can’t seem to find the musical rendition of “Still I Rise” that I’ve been hearing on the radio lately, but a search turned up this version.

 

Poets Answer an Age-Old Question (part 6)

Happy birthday to Theodore Roethke, who would have turned 112 on Monday, had it not been Memorial Day. Uh, I mean, had it not been for his untimely death in 1963. Except that, you know, a timely death would have caught up with him by now.

 

Poets answer an age-old question
Why did the chicken cross the road?

Theodore Roethke:
I cross the road, but take the crossing slow,
But don’t ask why—for now I do not know.
(I learn by going where I have to go.)

Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? (part 4)

 

Gil Scott-Heron

The chicken crossing will not be televised

It will not be sponsored by Colonel Sanders or

Brought to you by a contribution to your PBS station

From Chik-Fil-A

The chicken crossing will not be televised

(It might be on YouTube.)

  1. e. cummings

anychick lived in a pretty how coop

and str e  t   c    h     e      d

her chicken legs(white feathers

furled in the even

ing breeze)across

the sunset road because(pick peck)she

wanted(peck)to see

the

Capital(they didn’t

have those where she was from).

Poets Answer an Age-Old Question: Why did the chicken cross the road? (part 2)

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best hens of my generation destroyed by butchers, roasted, rotisserie-basted,
wandering across the street at dawn looking for a bawdy cock.

 

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of crossing isn’t hard to master–
when asphalt’s hot, it helps if you cross faster.

Gertrude Stein

The road
is a road
is a road
is a road
to cross
like a boss
and eat moss.

 

Click here for part 1 (featuring Dickinson, Whitman, and Shakespeare).