Edgar Lee Masters (Эдгар Ли Мастерс)

Rosie Roberts


I was sick, but more than that, I was mad
At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.
So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:
”I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,
Gradually wasting away.
But come and take me, I killed the son
Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s,
And the papers that said he killed himself
In his home while cleaning a hunting gun --
Lied like the devil to hush up scandal,
For the bribe of advertising.
In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s,
Because he knocked me down when I said
That, in spite of all the money he had,
I’d see my lover that night.”

Edgar Lee Masters’s other poems:

  1. Schroeder the Fisherman
  2. Theodore the Poet
  3. Sam Hookey
  4. Clarence Darrow
  5. The Village Atheist

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