Classic Poem

(Old Bowery Waltz)

It was easy to see that the woman was waiting for someone.
And not hard to tell that the first one to stop her would do.
And the one to do that was a drunkard, a blind, deaf and dumb one
Who took off his hat to her, knelt to her, then kissed her shoe.

It was clear as the dawn when he came down the stair he was thinking.
Disillusioned and sad with the time that he'd had up above.
The bums who'd been with her before said, " You must have been drinking
The darkest old Bowery dregs to take that for your love."

The sun rose, the moon rose, the stars rose, a cloudless procession,
A golden, a copper, a silver afire, aflame.
And there where a shadow returns to the oldest profession,
It is easy to see that the first one will do just the same.