The Drug Clerk

THE DRUG clerk stands behind the counter

Young and dapper and debonair.…

Before him burn the great unwinking lights

The hectic stars of city nights,

Red as hell’s pit, green as a mermaid’s hair.

A queer half-acrid smell is in the air.

Behind him on the shelves in ordered rows

With strange, abbreviated names

Dwell half the facts of life. That young man knows,

Bottled and boxed and powdered here,

Dumb tragedies, deceptions, secret shames,

And comedy and fear.

Sleep slumbers here, like a great quiet sea

Shrunk to this bottle’s compass; sleep that brings

Sweet respite from the teeth of pain

To those poor tossing things

That the white nurses watch so thoughtfully.

And here again

Dwell the shy souls of Maytime flowers

That shall make sweeter still those poignant hours

When wide-eyed youth looks on the face of love.

And, for those others who have found too late

The bitter fruits thereof,

Here are cosmetics, powders, paints,—the arts

That hunted women use to hunt again

With scented flesh for bait.

And here is comfort for the hearts

Of sucking babes in their first teething pain.

Here dwells the substance of huge fervid dreams,

Fantastic, many-colored, shot with gleams

Of ecstasy and madness, that shall come

To some pale, twitching sleeper in a bunk.

And here is courage, cheaply bought

To cure a blue sick funk,

And dearly paid for in the final sum.

Here in this powdered fly is caught

Desire more ravishing than Tarquin’s.…

And at last

When the one weary hope is past

Here is the sole escape,

The little postern in the house of breath

Where pallid fugitives keep tryst with death.

All this the drug clerk knows and there he stands,

Young and dapper and debonair.…

He rests a pair of slender hands,

Much manicured, upon the counter there

And speaks: “No, we don’t carry no pomade,

We only cater to the high-class trade.”

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