Clandestinely, by night, I will board a train And be borne, palpitant and eager, over the shuddering rails, Until In the chaste stillness of Sunday morning I am hurled into the blushing station of South Bend, Indiana. Thence I will speed to the Hotel Mortimer And, leering with hot lips, Rubbing with tremendous hand my rough jaws (For this is the shameful signal, Immemorial, inevitable), I will ask the way to the barber shop. The liveried menials will blench, But one of them, hardened in crime, Will feverishly seize my proffered gold, And lead me, on tiptoe, To the barber-shop’s secret door. There, in a dim back room, Screened, impenetrable, A barber (artfully disguised in a black coat and no chewing gum) Will (now and then peering nervously out beyond the screen, fearful of spies and policemen) Give to me, for twenty-five cents, The forbidden delight Of a Sunday morning shave. II THE WICKEDNESS OF WASHINGTON What wickedness is more witchingly wonderful Than the wickedness of Washington, Where it is heinous to hock And perilous to pawn? I will go to Washington And offer my watch to an usurer. “Wait here,” he will whisper, “And give me ten cents!” Then will a messenger, winged like a swallow, Carry my watch over meadow and hill Over the riotous River Potomac To the Virginian Shore; He will return with a lavender ticket; He will return with a five-dollar bill; He will return (Oh, the logic of law!) He will return with the watch And the pawnbroker will lock it away. III THE IMMORALITY OF INDIANAPOLIS I will go to Indianapolis, And there sin strangely By crossing the street catty-cornered Instead of at the crossings, And I shall be hanged. WAR SONGS I--WATER-COLOUR Pushing my way through the chattering throng of my brown-clad mates to the rail of the troop-ship, I look at still water, greasy and opaque. A touch of sunlight makes it splendid with rainbows, a great prismatic expanse, beautiful, more beautiful than clear water could be. Broken oars shatter the rainbow, bringing a black, clumsy rowboat close to our ship’s side. Around the black boat the rainbow settles. The rower rests his oars and lifts graceful entreating arms. He wears pale blue overalls. In the stern of his boat is a little girl in a cardinal cloak. On her head is one of the caps that make the French sailors look so gay and gentle, a flat, round, blue thing with a red pompom. She claps her hands when cooks lean through the portholes and throw loaves of bread to her father. II--BREAKFAST