For fifty years, <br />Cruel, insatiable Old World. <br />You have punched me over the heart <br />Till you made me cough blood. <br />The few paltry things I gathered <br />You snatched out of my hands. <br />You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips. <br />You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul. <br /> <br />You look at me now and think, <br />'He is still strong, <br />There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there. <br />At the end of that time he will be old and broken, <br />Not able to strike back, <br />But cringing and crying for leave <br />To live a little longer.' <br /> <br />Those twenty, pitiful, extra years <br />Would please you more than the fifty past, <br />Would they not, Old World? <br />Well, I hold them up before your greedy eyes, <br />And snatch them away as I laugh in your face, <br />Ha! Ha! <br />Bang —!<br /><br />James Weldon Johnson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-suicide-8/
