Carp Diem

Carp Diem

Eugene Carman

Rhodes’s slave! Selling shoes and gingham,
Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day
long
For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and
thirteen days
For more than twenty years,
Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes Sir” and Thank
you”
A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a
month.
Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap
“Commercial.”
And compelled to go to Sunday School and to
listen
To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times
a year
For more than an hour at a time,
Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church
As well as the store and the bank.
So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning
I suddenly saw myself in the glass:
My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.
So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing!
You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!
You Rhode’s slave! Till Roger Baughman
Thought I was having a fight with some one,
And looked over the transom just in time
To see me fall on the floor in a heap
From a broken vein in my head.


From "The Spoon River Anthology", Edgar Lee Masters, 1915