246
PARTISAN REVIEW
Alfred Hayes
THE DRUNKEN BOY
Jean keeps a joint on the avenue.
Off Oak next
to
the undertaker's ring number ten.
The blinds are drawn, bacon fries on the stove downstairs,
Upstairs the boilermakers and the traveling men
Laugh in the upholstered parlor....
The drunken boy comes reeling down the street.
In the allnight taxi stands
The exhausted hackies drop their heads upon their hands.
The foghorns cry across the river.
Whatever fears itself or fears the law
Appears at this hour
Smoking a cigarette or leaning in the shadnw of a door.
Now let the statues in Schenley Park
Weep such tears
That shame engulfs the local charities
And clinic doctors take up furious pens:
The drunken boy's grown tired of his eighteen years.
With a slight, rattling cough,
Unsmiling, the woman slips her cheap kimono off.
Up from some ruined mining town,
Wilkes Barre, McKeesport, Lawrenceville,
Dead docks, the mines are all shut down,
She has escaped fatback and the local mill.
The drunken boy strips slowly from his clothes.
She wears, rolled above her knees,
Black mesh stockings, and retains her high.heeled shoes.
One breast, still firm, is trademarked with a yellow bruise.
And the boy goes forward and he embraces these.
Now if there are virgins left in this city,
Such children as
0 ld lechers seeing their clear eyes love
And madames for their innocence protect and pity,
Teach them the secrets of Egypt and give them poise.
