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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CHILDREN OF THE SUN: 41, by WALLACE GOULD Poet's Biography First Line: To me, the heat was disgusting Last Line: And she laughed and went home to warm over some soup. | |||
To me, the heat was disgusting. It was only when I sucked the fumes of my cigarette into me that I was conscious of breathing, so I pulled each drag to the bottom of my lungs where it struck with an ecstatic thud. Nothing else seemed to be either passing into my lungs or out of them. It was depressingly hot. For an hour or more, that noon, I lolled in the shaded door of the barn, smoking, sweating, gasping, desperate with the general depression, relieved only by feeling the tobacco-smoke pass into and out of my lungs, and I made a diversion of blowing whiffs at a caterpillar which clung to the tender leaves at the end of a long and low-hanging branch of woodbine. Then came the little old woman from across the alley. She was bent and wrinkled but quick of step and glance. The step was firm. The glance was sharp. She had once been a grand dame and had commanded servants and her perfumery had cost six dollars an ounce. On this day she wore a percale dress which was greasy and which was shielded in front by a greasier apron. Her perfumery was the sweat of a laboring body. While passing the garden she picked a green string-bean from the vines and began to chew it. She saw me. Uttering a little squeak of delight, she came and sat near me, on a pile of old boards. "Aint this a hell of a day?" she mumbled, munching the bean. "Certainly is," I said, turning my head to blow the smoke away from her. She watched the smoke vanish. "Blow your cussed old smoke this way!" she commanded, mumbling, munching the bean. "You know very well how I like it. I haven't smoked since the time --" and the poppies caught her eye. So, after that, I blew the smoke her way and she munched the bean and said no more for a while but sniffed the smoke and trotted one foot and gazed at the poppies. Soon, I arose and gathered some poppies -- nine scarlet poppies -- and gave them to her and blew a whiff in her face and she laughed and went home to warm over some soup. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHILDREN OF THE SUN: 23 by WALLACE GOULD CHILDREN OF THE SUN: 52 by WALLACE GOULD THE DEAD PAN by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING TO THE MEMORY OF THE BRAVE AMERICANS UNDER GENERAL GREENE by PHILIP FRENEAU REMEMBERED MUSIC; A FRAGMENT by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THE IRISH PEASANT TO HIS MISTRESS by THOMAS MOORE |
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