This is Western, written many years ago
when I was living in Salt Lake and had
some very good friends in the Church of the Latter day
Saints.
It's called "The Swarming Bees."
I remember the evening that uncle Willie's bees swarmed
in the neighbor's yard high up in an old box elder tree,
the graveyard cluster hung.
Swelled with so many thousand bees,
it almost broke the branch.
And Uncle Willie sent his boy, Peter up the trunk
with a garbage pail, but of course, the pale fell
and the whole big cluster came down right
on top of Uncle Willie's head.
But he stood still and never got a sting,
though he was black with bees.
So for the next two weeks, he was quoting Horace,
Howell Wolfe won't bite so virtuous a man.
And after he'd coaxed and smoked the bees into a new hive,
he sat out on the front porch with his shoes
off and drank three high balls down.
One for the bees, and one for the dead
departed soul of President Heber Grant,
and one to the health of that dauntless warrior
general principles.
This all happened just when the Russians
were blasting Berlin and for a long time
that livid cluster hung in my mind.
The Black, and burned, and crawling death's head
of my youth old Europe.