New at IWP Books: Phyllis McGinley, 1946, Stones from a Glass House.

tiger, tiger

Verses composed upon hearing that the Association for Childhood Education, as well as other groups, was calling Little Black Sambo an “undesirable book,” because “it disseminates racial and religious prejudices.”

Little Black Sambo, mind your cues;
 Behave like a wary fella.
Hold on tight to those purple shoes,
 That beautiful green umbrella.
Better be careful, better not bungle,
Strolling soft through this civilized jungle.
Branches bow
 And the grass is hollowed.
Don’t look now
 But I think you’re followed.
Something’s after you, angrier far
Than even your fabulous tigers are —
A striped thing with a public cry
And a hot, fanatical tiger eye,
That lives in bluster and dwells in storm.
And one of its names is called Reform.

Oh, one of its names’s Self-Righteousness.
 It feeds on the flesh of rumor
And quite makes up in its zeal, I guess,
 What it lacks in a sense of humor.
Loose in the world, it prowls and pants,
Terming intolerance Tolerance,
Or out of its lair
 Comes daily tumbling
To fill the air
 With enormous rumbling.
So listen, listen, Little Black Sambo.
Take it hastily on the lam, bo.
Whiten your dark, endearing face.
Hide in the bush, deny your race.
For that which formerly hunted witches
Bays on the trail of your sky-blue britches.

Hit for shelter, but as you do so,
Shout a warning to Robinson Crusoe.
Bid him tidy
 The footprints, straight,
Or Good Man Frid’y
 Will share your fate.
Close the covers on Mr. Kipling,
Calling to Mowgli, the sunburnt stripling.
Snatch the palm
 (May the Lord redeem us!)
From Uncle Tom
 And from Uncle Remus,
Epaminondas, and, just to be sure,
Maybe Othello, the noble Moor.
The peril stalks.
 It will soon have treed’ em.
For though it walks
 In the clothes of freedom
And wears a bright, respectable name,
It’s a full-grown tiger just the same.