Days Of 1908

DAYS OF 1908

That year he found himself out of work;
and so was living by playing cards,
or backgammon, and by borrowing.
He’d been offered a job, in a small stationer’s,
at three pounds a month.
But he turned it down, without any hesitation.
It wouldn’t do. That was no salary for him,
a rather literate young man of twenty-five.
He won two or three shillings a day, if that.
What could the lad make from cards and backgammon,
in the common caf?s of his kind,
however cleverly he played,
however gullible the opponents he chose.
As for the borrowing, it was neither here nor there.
He’d rarely come up with a crown,
more usually only half that,
sometimes he even settled for a shilling.
For a week or so, sometimes longer,
when he got away from the awful late nights,
he’d refresh himself by bathing, by a morning swim.
His clothes were in a terrible state.
He always wore the same suit,
a suit the color of very faded cinnamon.
O summer days of nineteen hundred and eight,
missing from your aspect, tastefully so,
was the faded cinnamon-colored suit.
Your aspect has preserved him
as he was whenever he removed,
whenever he threw off those unbecoming clothes,
and that patched underwear.
And he remained stark naked;
flawlessly beautiful; a sight to behold.
His hair uncombed, swept back;
his limbs slightly suntanned from his morning nakedness
when bathing, when on the beach.

Photography

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