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