Volume 2 — A BALLAD OF NEW SINS

I am sick of the riotous roses of rapture, Of sibilant serpentine lips, Of the wine cup And murder And all that mid-Victorian stuff. I will sin large purple sins American And new. I THE SIN OF SOUTH BEND 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.