Chicago May

CHICAGO MAY XI ‘She never lets me from her sight an hour. On one excuse, five minutes and no more! ‘And then—even then !—she fears to lose her power. T hear her heavy breathing at the door: She listens. “What's he doing?” One confesses That one must leave you to a pair of guesses. r, she will send me out, some time she feels She is safe, and when my back is turned, she runs Through all my pockets eagerly, and steals Each scrap of writing. She was human once : Her thirty years of whoring have snowed under All traces of it; and, by God, no wonder| She even stole my own vile wage; she stole ‘What she had given me herself: she took The body, wants the mind, would take the soul If she knew any longer where to look. No, my good sow. You take what you have paid for; ‘The other matters you were never made for. ‘That is her curse. She feels and knows she has Nothing of any value, feels and knows She is cast out for ever, cannot pass From her own mire to my eternal snows. She could not, would not; yet is not exempt From feeling all my close-concealed contempt.