XXV
The young fellow walks about
with nothing to do: he has lost his job.
“If I ever get another, I’ll be hard!
You’ve got to be hard
to get on. I’ll be hard, all right,”
he says bitterly. Takes out his cigarettes.
Only four or five left.
Looks at me out of the corner of his eye—
a stranger he has just met; hesitates;
and offers me a cigarette.

XXVI
I am always surprise to meet, after ten or twenty years,
those who
were poor and silly
still poor and silly, of course, but alive—
in spite of wars and plagues and panics,
alive and well.
Is it possible
there is a Father in Heaven,
after all?