It baffles the foreigner like an idiom,
And he is right to adopt it as a form
Less serious than the living-room or bar;
For it disestablishes the café,
Is a collective, and on basic country.
Not that it praises hygiene and corrupts
The ice-cream parlor and the tobacconist’s
Is it a center; but that the attractive symbols
Watch over puberty and leer
Like rubber bottles waiting for sick-use.
Youth comes to jingle nickles and crack wise;
The baseball scores are his, the magazines
Devoted to lust, the jazz, the coca-cola,
The lending-library of love’s latest.
He is the customer; he is heroized.
And every nook and cranny of the flesh
Is spoken to by packages with wiles.
‘Buy me, buy me’, they whimper and cajole;
The hectic range of lipsticks pouts
Revealing the wicked and the simple mouth.
With scarcely any evasion in their eye
They smoke, undress their girls, exact a stance;
But only for a moment. The clock goes round;
Crude fellowships are made and lost.
They slump in booths like rags, not even drunk.
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