free-verse21 lines

The Low-Down White

This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;

There's money to burn in the streets to-night, so I've sent my klooch to town,

With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three;

One for herself to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,

To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place;

To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face,

Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak

In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, 'mid the ranch-house filth and reek,

I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase, and rise with a verse of Greek?

Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;

Called to the bar - my friends were true! but they could not keep me straight;

Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate.

But I'm not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn't time to spare,

And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care -

Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair.

She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow,

Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe;

And yonder she comes, by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering through the snow.