Eat and Walk
T HERE'S A THREE-PENNY Lunch on Dover Street
With a cardboard sign in the window: EAT.
Three steps down to the basement room,
Two gas jets in a sea of gloom;
Four-square counter, stove in the center,
Heavy odor of food as you enter;
A kettle of soup as large as a vat,
Potatoes, cabbage, morsels of fat
Bubbling up in a savory smoke—
Food for the gods when the gods are broke.
A wrecked divinity serving it up,
A hunk of bread and a steaming cup;
Three penny each, or two for a nickel;
An extra cent for a relish of pickle.
Slopping it up, no time for the graces—
Why should they care, these men with faces
Gaunt with hunger, battered with weather,
In walking the streets for days together?
No delicate sipping, no leisurely talk—
The rule of the place is Eat and Walk.
With a cardboard sign in the window: EAT.
Three steps down to the basement room,
Two gas jets in a sea of gloom;
Four-square counter, stove in the center,
Heavy odor of food as you enter;
A kettle of soup as large as a vat,
Potatoes, cabbage, morsels of fat
Bubbling up in a savory smoke—
Food for the gods when the gods are broke.
A wrecked divinity serving it up,
A hunk of bread and a steaming cup;
Three penny each, or two for a nickel;
An extra cent for a relish of pickle.
Slopping it up, no time for the graces—
Why should they care, these men with faces
Gaunt with hunger, battered with weather,
In walking the streets for days together?
No delicate sipping, no leisurely talk—
The rule of the place is Eat and Walk.
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