To him in whom the love of Nature has Imperfectly supplanted the desire And dread necessity of food, your shore, Fair Oakland, is a terror. Over all
Your sunny level, from Tamaletown To where the Pestuary's fragrant slime, With dead dogs studded, bears its ailing fleet, Broods the still menace of starvation. Bones
Of men and women bleach along the ways And pampered vultures sleep upon the trees. It is a land of death, and Famine there Holds sovereignty; though some there be her sway
Who challenge, and intrenched in larders live, Drawing their sustentation from abroad. But woe to him, the stranger! He shall die As die the early righteous in the bud
And promise of their prime. He, venturesome To penetrate the wilds rectangular Of grass-grown ways luxuriant of blooms, Frequented of the bee and of the blithe,
Bold squirrel, strays with heedless feet afar From human habitation and is lost In mid-Broadway. There hunger seizes him, And ( careless man! deeming God's providence
Extends so far ) he has not wherewithal To bate its urgency. Then, lo! appears A mealery — a restaurant — a place Where poison battles famine, and the two,
Like fish-hawks warring in the upper sky For that which one has taken from the deep, Manage between them to dispatch the prey. He enters and leaves hope behind. There ends
His history. Anon his bones, clean-picked By buzzards ( with the bones himself had picked, Incautious ) line the highway. O, my friends, Of all felonious and deadlywise
Devices of the Enemy of Souls, Planted along the ways of life to snare Man's mortal and immortal part alike, The Oakland restaurant is chief. It lives
That man may die. It flourishes that life May wither. Its foundation stones repose On human hearts and hopes. I've seen in it Crabs stewed in milk and salad offered up
With dressing so unholily compound That it included flour and sugar! Yea, I've eaten dog there!— dog, as I'm a man, Dog seethed in sewage of the town! No more —
Thy hand, Dyspepsia, assumes the pen And scrawls a tortured “Finis” on the page.
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