Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BENNY THE BEGGAR, by CALE YOUNG RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BENNY THE BEGGAR, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Old benny the beggar, pocked, ragged and blind
Last Line: And hang himself in her corset strings.
Subject(s): Begging & Beggars; Poverty; Sin


Old Benny the beggar, pocked, ragged and blind,
With toes cropping out of his barn-like shoes,
As if to find pennies nobody will lose,
Stands rank on the corner of Gay Street.
He owns a guitar, slung 'round his neck,
Scratched with strumming and dead of tone,
And he tunes its strings to a mouth-saxophone
He slavers old airs into;
Old rags of song he has picked by ear
From the music-dumps of many a year,
From heart-stuff made by the music trade,
For the shallow moods of the many.
And he plays the faster, whenever a hand
Drops coins in the cup he wears.
For he cannot see how the givers flee
From the tainted sight and sound of him,
As if from what they might have been
Had his, or his sire's, been their sires' sin;
And he lives to turn over his gains to a wench
Who keeps him from thinking life's but a stench
In the blind sewer of his days;
A slut who pities him 'twixt the whiles
She pays her way with more than smiles --
Nor lets him know she cuckolds him;
But hears him talk and dream by night
Of things more wonderful far than sight:
Of a little house at the foot of a hill
And children and birds and a shady rill,
And the new songs he'll twang there.
So every morning in rain or sun,
In June or winter, he taps his way
To Gay Street corner -- and sickens the day
For Charity passing by...
Which will not matter if, ere he dies,
He does not learn that his hussy lies.
For if he does, he'll choke her, I think,
And tear from her wanton flesh
Its gaudy jewels and harlot things --
And hang himself in her corset strings.





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