10
PARTISAN REVIEW
gnawing in your head and
somebody with everything
vital and whole and real?
You can read it in the papers every day
about somebody and somebody else found dead
in a furnished room (and think of all the bother
for the poor landlady, cleaning the mess away)
and nobody knows why they did it or who
they are or where the hell did they come from anyway
and no relations are there to claim the bodies
because their relations are far far away
in Chicago maybe, or Brooklyn, say.
The coroner will chant his Death-by-Suicide dirge
and nobody'll know
that somebody and somebody else have hit the eternal hay.
And maybe in the very same sheet you'll read
how somebody and somebody else are dead ,
a couple of Mexicans this time. Headlines:
STARVING MEXICAN PEONS EAT GRASS, DIE.
You probably won't see it (it's in 12-point lightface,
Babe Ruth and Roosevelt rate 48-point bold)
but read it if you find it among the want ads.
Doughnuts to grass it will leave you cold.
Elsewhere in a city, Milwaukee maybe,
somebody'll say, "Isn't it terrible Mamie?"
staining the newsprint with everready tears
"and just think of it Mamie dear they died
without even an uncle around to bury them."
But you, brother, think as you go your way
reading this in papers under your flophouse mattress,
you know who pours the pennies and the lead, you know
who rots the watered crops, you know
who makes the walls of barns to sag
inward on emptiness
who waves a flag
and blows hot air through a star-spangled trumpet.
while crops in fields and faces in streets
go slowly empty and yellow.
EDWIN
RoLFE
