A porcupine skin, Stiff with bad tanning, It must have ended somewhere. Stuffed horned owl Pompous Yellow eyed; Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig Sooted with dust. Piles of old magazines, Drawers of boy’s letters And the line of love They must have ended somewhere. Yesterday's Tribune is gone Along with youth And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach The year of the big storm When the hotel burned down At Seney, Michigan.
This poem is in the public domain.
There are never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows No successful suicides. A Chinese boy kills himself and is dead. (they continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome) A Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead. (no one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone) They find a model dead alone in bed and very dead. (it made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge) Sweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds and stomach pumps rescue the people one knows. Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.
This poem is in the public domain.