Indignation" Jones

You would not believe, would you         That I came from good Welsh stock?         That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?         And of more direct lineage than the         New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?         You would not believe that I had been to school         And read some books.         You saw me only as a run-down man         With matted hair and beard         And ragged clothes.         Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer         From being bruised and continually bruised,         And swells into a purplish mass         Like growths on stalks of corn.         Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life         Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,         With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,         Whom you tormented and drove to death.         So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days         Of my life.         No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,         Resounding on the hollow sidewalk         Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal         And a nickel's worth of bacon.