Elizabeth Barrett
Browning put her soul
In a wheelbarrow and
trundled it across
Five centuries. By the
time they’d gone
Fifty years Elizabeth – a frail woman if not
So frail as her father
insisted – was panting
And began hinting the soul
could get out
And walk for a bit or even
take a turn
Pushing the barrow. Her
soul though
Oped wide its grey eyes
and said
“I dreamed a poet pushed
me through time
In a wheelbarrow. Passing
strange would it be
To wake and find it true but
worse still
To rise and have to push.
Be warned!
At any moment the tyranny
of impulse
May set me all a-yell and
I’ll call
'Fresh fish! Fresh fish!
Who’ll buy? Who’ll buy?' ”
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