The Right to Sorrow

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow
Over the dead child of a millionaire
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
Scratch off
And get cashed
Very well
You for your grief and I for mine
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to
I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky
His job is sweeping blood off the floor
Now his three year old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week’s wages
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty
Cents till the debt is wiped out
The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box
They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills