Men staggered to the mat and reeling rose.
Crowns glittered there in splendour, won or lost,
And bones were shattered as the sledges crossed.
Swift as a leopard, strong and fiercely lean,
Champions knew the prowess of Lavigne.
The giant dwarf Joe Walcott saw him loom
And broken, bloody, reeled before his doom.
Handler and Everhardt and rugged Burge
Saw at the last his snarling face emerge
From bloody mists that veiled their dimming sight
Ere they sank down into unlighted night.
Strong men and bold, lay vanquished at his feet.
Mighty was he in triumph and defeat.
Far fade the echoes of the ringside’s cheers
And all is lost in mists of dust-dead years.
Cold breaks the dawn; the East is ghastly red.
Hand up the broken gloves; Lavigne is dead.
The Kissing of Sal Snooboo
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A bunch of the girls were whooping it up
In the old Lip-stick saloon,
And the kid at the player-piano
Was twanging a jazzy tune,
When out of the night with perfume on his shirt
And stacomb upon his hair,
A young man staggered inside the door
And meowed like a grizzly-bear.
He kicked the kid off the piano stool
And sat him down to play.
The piano yowled like an old tom cat
To the tune of "Hip! Hurray!"
Says he, "Gals, you don’t know me,
But, by gosh, I know you,
And one of you is a classy dame,
And that one is Sal Snooboo!"
She squawked and somebody turned the lights,
Something went "Smack!" in the dark.
There was nothing for anybody to do
But to stand still and s****** and hark.
Somebody turned the lights on,
And Sally was standing there,
But the stranger wasn’t; he was done,
And Sal was arranging her hair.
A Lady’s Chamber
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Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope
Scent the gloom where the dead men grope.
Silver, ruby-eyed leopards crouch
At the carven ends of the silken couch.
A purple mist of a perfume rare
Billows and sways, and weights the air.
The pale blue domes of the ceiling rise
Gemmed and carved like opium skies—
Golden serpents with crystal eyes.
Why should men grow strange and cold,
Like a marble heart in a breast of gold?
Their eyes are ice and they look strange tales,
They carve the mist with their long jade nails.
Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope
Scent the gloom where dead men grope;
They have stabbed their hearts with a golden sword
And hanged themselves with a silken rope.
Laughter
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Laughter's the lure of the gods; therefore must ye laugh
Mocking Destiny's nods, a strong wind driving the chaff
Lesbia
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From whence came this grim desire?
What was the wine in my blood?
What raced through my veins like fire
And beat at my brain like a flood?
Bare is the desert's dust,
Deep is the emerald sea—
Barer my deathless lust,
Deeper the hunger of me.
Goddess I sit and brood—
They cringe to my Hell-lit eyes,
The wretched women nude
I have gripped between my thighs.
As they writhed between my hands
And the ocean heard their screams
Firing my passion's brands
As I dreamed my lurid dreams.
Their breath came fast and hot,
Their tresses were Hades' mesh;
World and the worlds were not;
Flesh against pulsing flesh.
Their white limbs fluttered and tossed,
They whimpered beneath my grasp
And their maindenhood was lost
In strange unnatural clasp.
Hours my pleasure beguiled
The green Arcadian glades,
As idle mornings I whiled
With free-hipped country maids.
Under the star-gemmed skies
That looked upon curious scenes
I have spread the round white things
Of naked and frightened queens.
What was it turned my face
From brown-limbed Grecian boys,
Weary of their embrace
To darker and barer joys?
A miser weary of coins
I wearied of early charms,
Of youths who ungirt my loins,
Restless sighed in their arms.
With many a youth I lay,
But their wine to me was dregs.
I found scant joy in they
Who parted my supple legs.
I turned to the loves I prize;
Found joy amid perfumed curls,
In a maiden's amorous sighs,
In the tears of naked girls.
These are the wine of delight—
A girl's ungirdled charms,
A woman's laugh in the night
As she lies in my eager arms.
Goddess I sit and laugh,
Nude as the scornful moon—
World and the worlds are chaff
Say, shall my day be soon?
Libertine
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I set my soul to a wild lute
And taught my feet to dance.
I float, a broken straw,
Upon the Sea of Chance.
Life
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They bruised my soul with a proverb,
They bruised my back with a rod,
And they bade me bow to my elders,
For that was the word of God.
They pent up my soul and bound me
Till life was a living death,
They struck the wine from my fingers,
The passion from my breath.
I reached my hands to living,
They hurled me back into school,
And they said, "Go learn your lessons,
"You innocent young fool."
They yowled till they woke the trumpets --
And the sword blade rent the plow,
And they said, "It is your duty
"To die for your elders now."
They cowered far from the battle
As I went to the strife,
And I spilled my guts in the trenches
In the red dawn of my life.
And the elders named me hero,
But more than their words and ire
Was the scent of a strange wild flower
There where I died in the mire.
