Black Beetles in Amber

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.