The pure products of America

go crazy--

mountain folk from Kentucky



or the ribbed north end of 

Jersey

with its isolate lakes and



valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves

old names

and promiscuity between



devil-may-care men who have taken

to railroading

out of sheer lust of adventure--



and young slatterns, bathed

in filth

from Monday to Saturday



to be tricked out that night

with gauds

from imaginations which have no



peasant traditions to give them

character

but flutter and flaunt



sheer rags-succumbing without

emotion

save numbed terror



under some hedge of choke-cherry

or viburnum-

which they cannot express--



Unless it be that marriage

perhaps

with a dash of Indian blood



will throw up a girl so desolate

so hemmed round

with disease or murder



that she'll be rescued by an 

agent--

reared by the state and



sent out at fifteen to work in

some hard-pressed

house in the suburbs--



some doctor's family, some Elsie--

voluptuous water

expressing with broken



brain the truth about us--

her great

ungainly hips and flopping breasts



addressed to cheap

jewelry

and rich young men with fine eyes



as if the earth under our feet

were

an excrement of some sky



and we degraded prisoners

destined

to hunger until we eat filth



while the imagination strains

after deer

going by fields of goldenrod in



the stifling heat of September

Somehow

it seems to destroy us



It is only in isolate flecks that

something

is given off



No one

to witness

and adjust, no one to drive the car