From a sunbaked cliff, I flagged a skiff, With a salt soaked pair of jeans, Then worked my way for I couldn’t pay On a fruiter to New Orleans. It’s kind of a habit, the tropics— It gets you worse than rum; You get away and you swear you’ll stay, But they call and back you come. Six short months went by before I was back there on the job Running a war in Salvador. With a barefoot black face mob. A mob that made me general, Leading a “grand” revolt, And my only friend from start to end Was a punishing army colt. I might have become their president, A prosperous man of means, But a gunboat came and spoiled my game With a hundred and ten marines. So I awoke from my dream dead broke, And drifted from bad to worse, And sank as low as a man can go, Who walks with an empty purse. But stars they say appear by day When you are down in the deep dark pit; My lucky star found me that way When I was about to quit. Alone on a hot flea ridden cot, I was down with the yellow jack Alone in the bush and dammed near dead— She found me and brought me back. In her eyes shone lights of empires gone, For her’s was the blood of kings— When she spoke her voice inspired high thoughts, And dreams of nobler things. We were spliced in a Yankee meeting house In the land of your Uncle Sam, And I drew my pay from the U. S. A. For I worked on the Gatun dam. Then the devil sent his right hand man, I might have suspected he would, And he took her life with a long, thin knife; Because—she was pure and good. Within me died hope, honor, pride. And all but a primitive will To hound him down on his blood red trail And find, and kill and kill! O’er chicle camps and logwood swamps, I hunted him many a moon Then found my man in a long pit pan, At the edge of a blue lagoon. The chase was o’er at the farther shore, It ended a two years quest And I left him there with an empty stare And a knife stuck in his chest. You see those marks upon my arm? You wonder what they mean? Those marks were left by fingers deft Of my trained nurse, Miss Morphine. You say that habit’s worse than rum. It’s possible too you are right. But at least it drives away the things That come and stare at night. There’s a homestead down in an old Maine town And the lilacs ’round the gate, And the night winds whisper it might have been But the truth has come too late. For whenever you play, whatever the way, For stakes that are large or small, The claw of the tropics gathers it in, And the dealer gets it all. * * * * * Oh, Happy Existence