Pauper’s Plight
A Poem
Dressed in rags
With a leg that lags,
He meanders to the edge of the street.
He watches the cars
And their rich men far
As he shrivels in the noonday heat.
With eye that droops
And back that stoops,
He looks all of seventy, barely alive:
Bound to his stink
At sanity’s brink;
In penury ensconced at thirty-five.
Matted, dusty hair;
An angry glare:
Bitter lines of hate around the mouth;
Eating discarded bread
On his sidewalk-bed.
Despair and envy make him uncouth.
He plies without shame
For it’s a number’s game:
He shakes his tin till his hand is sore.
Each rich man’s grimace
Meets an indifferent face,
But inside he’s dying just a little more.
The pauper’s state
In all his hate
Is not his fault or so he cries.
Others are to blame,
Or so he would claim;
That’s his ego’s bitter disguise.
What gives him the drive
To stay alive,
But none to break away from his plight?
No trade, no skill.
To try — no will.
Do hopeless, blind eyes see no end in sight?
Or, by success spurned,
His dignity unlearned,
He took to the streets: a defeated discard?
His respect shunned,
By everyone:
Did ceaseless rejection leave his ego scarred?
This hollowed shell
In its private hell,
Clings to a life without meaning or measure.
He shakes his can
At every man,
For at wit’s end that’s his only treasure.
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