The Bad Old Days

The Bad Old Days

by Kenneth Rexroth

The summer of nineteen eighteen   

I read The Jungle and The

Research Magnificent. That fall   

My father died and my aunt   

Took me to Chicago to live.   

The first thing I did was to take   

A streetcar to the stockyards.   

In the winter afternoon,   

Gritty and fetid, I walked

Through the filthy snow, through the   

Squalid streets, looking shyly   

Into the people's faces,

Those who were home in the daytime.   

Debauched and exhausted faces,   

Starved and looted brains, faces   

Like the faces in the senile   

And insane wards of charity   

Hospitals. Predatory

Faces of little children.

Then as the soiled twilight darkened,   

Under the green gas lamps, and the   

Sputtering purple arc lamps,   

The faces of the men coming

Home from work, some still alive with   

The last pulse of hope or courage,   

Some sly and bitter, some smart and   

Silly, most of them already   

Broken and empty, no life,   

Only blinding tiredness, worse   

Than any tired animal.   

The sour smells of a thousand   

Suppers of fried potatoes and   

Fried cabbage bled into the street.   

I was giddy and sick, and out   

Of my misery I felt rising   

A terrible anger and out

Of the anger, an absolute vow.   

Today the evil is clean

And prosperous, but it is   

Everywhere, you don't have to   

Take a streetcar to find it,

And it is the same evil.

And the misery, and the

Anger, and the vow are the same.