Ballads of a Bohemian | Page 9

a book,?If a chap has eyes to see;?For, no matter where I look,?Stories, stories jump at me.?Moving tales my pen might write;?Poems plain on every face;?Monologues you could recite?With inimitable grace.
(Ah! Imagination's power)?See yon ~demi-mondaine~ there,?Idly toying with a flower,?Smiling with a pensive air . . .?Well, her smile is but a mask,?For I saw within her muff?Such a wicked little flask:?Vitriol -- ugh! the beastly stuff.
Now look back beside the bar.?See yon curled and scented ~beau~,?Puffing at a fine cigar --?~Sale espe\ce de maquereau~.?Well (of course, it's all surmise),?It's for him she holds her place;?When he passes she will rise,?Dash the vitriol in his face.
Quick they'll carry him away,?Pack him in a Red Cross car;?Her they'll hurry, so they say,?To the cells of St. Lazare.?What will happen then, you ask??What will all the sequel be??Ah! Imagination's task?Isn't easy . . . let me see . . .
She will go to jail, no doubt,?For a year, or maybe two;?Then as soon as she gets out?Start her bawdy life anew.?He will lie within a ward,?Harmless as a man can be,?With his face grotesquely scarred,?And his eyes that cannot see.
Then amid the city's din?He will stand against a wall,?With around his neck a tin?Into which the pennies fall.?She will pass (I see it plain,?Like a cinematograph),?She will halt and turn again,?Look and look, and maybe laugh.
Well, I'm not so sure of that --?Whether she will laugh or cry.?He will hold a battered hat?To the lady passing by.?He will smile a cringing smile,?And into his grimy hold,?With a laugh (or sob) the while,?She will drop a piece of gold.
"Bless you, lady," he will say,?And get grandly drunk that night.?She will come and come each day,?Fascinated by the sight.?Then somehow he'll get to know?(Maybe by some kindly friend)?Who she is, and so . . . and so?Bring my story to an end.
How his heart will burst with hate!?He will curse and he will cry.?He will wait and wait and wait,?Till again she passes by.?Then like tiger from its lair?He will leap from out his place,?Down her, clutch her by the hair,?Smear the vitriol on her face.
(Ah! Imagination rare)?See . . . he takes his hat to go;?Now he's level with her chair;?Now she rises up to throw. . . .?~God! and she has done it too~ . . .?Oh, those screams; those hideous screams!?I imagined and . . . it's true:?How his face will haunt my dreams!
What a sight! It makes me sick.?Seems I am to blame somehow.?~Garcon~, fetch a brandy quick . . .?There! I'm feeling better now.?Let's collaborate, we two,?You the Mummer, I the Bard;?Oh, what ripping stuff we'll do,?Sitting on the Boulevard!
It is strange how one works easily at times. I wrote this so quickly that I might almost say I had reached the end before I had come to the beginning. In such a mood I wonder why everybody?does not write poetry. Get a Roget's ~Thesaurus~, a rhyming dictionary: sit before your typewriter with a strong glass of coffee at your elbow, and just click the stuff off.
Facility
So easy 'tis to make a rhyme,?That did the world but know it,?Your coachman might Parnassus climb,?Your butler be a poet.
Then, oh, how charming it would be?If, when in haste hysteric?You called the page, you learned that he?Was grappling with a lyric.
Or else what rapture it would yield,?When cook sent up the salad,?To find within its depths concealed?A touching little ballad.
Or if for tea and toast you yearned,?What joy to find upon it?The chambermaid had coyly laid?A palpitating sonnet.
Your baker could the fashion set;?Your butcher might respond well;?With every tart a triolet,?With every chop a rondel.
Your tailor's bill . . . well, I'll be blowed!?Dear chap! I never knowed him . . .?He's gone and written me an ode,?Instead of what I ~owed~ him.
So easy 'tis to rhyme . . . yet stay!?Oh, terrible misgiving!?Please do not give the game away . . .?I've got to make my living.
V
My Garret
May 1914.
Golden Days
Another day of toil and strife,?Another page so white,?Within that fateful Log of Life?That I and all must write;?Another page without a stain?To make of as I may,?That done, I shall not see again?Until the Judgment Day.
Ah, could I, could I backward turn?The pages of that Book,?How often would I blench and burn!?How often loathe to look!?What pages would be