“Song of the Drunken Business Man”
Don’t try, little one, to keep hold of me.
Go home! There’s a place for you by the fire.
Age is waiting to welcome you, love—
Go home and sit by the fire.
Into the naked street I ran,
Roaring and bellowing like a cow;
Shaking the walls of the houses down,
Proclaiming my dream of black desire.
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole,
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole.
If there’s a thing in this world that’s good it’s guts.
I’m a blackbird hovering over the land:
Go on home! Let me alone.
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole,
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole.
Do you know, little dove, I admire your lips—
They’re so red.
What are you doing out in the street?
Take my arm! Look at me!
Ah, you be gone. I’m sixty-five years old tonight,
Now what’s the use of beginning again.
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole,
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole.
Well, I’m tired. I ache. What’s the use?
I can’t meet the note. I have a son.
Let’s go home. It’s twelve o’clock.
I’m going to get that boy into West Point yet.
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole,
Eighteen letters in a pigeon-hole.
from Mid-American Chants, by Sherwood Anderson, New York: John Lane Co., 1918
This is a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive (link).