Of the twenty looking on

Ten murmur, “O, it’s a hell of a job,”

Ten others, “Jesus, I wish I had the job.”

Mill-Doors

You never come back.

I say good-by when I see you going in the doors,

The hopeless open doors that call and wait

And take you then for—how many cents a day?

How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers?

I say good-by because I know they tap your wrists,

In the dark, in the silence, day by day,

And all the blood of you drop by drop,

And you are old before you are young.

You never come back.

Mag

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.

I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.

I wish we never bought a license and a white dress

For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister

And told him we would love each other and take care of each other

Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.

Yes, I’m wishing now you lived somewhere away from here

And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.

I wish the kids had never come

And rent and coal and clothes to pay for

And a grocery man calling for cash,

Every day cash for beans and prunes.

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.

I wish to God the kids had never come.

Onion Days

Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti comes along Peoria Street every morning at nine o’clock

With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.

Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through the negligence of a fellow-servant,

Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions for Jasper on the Bowmanville road.

She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does,

And gets back from Jasper’s with cash for her day’s work, between nine and ten o’clock at night.

Last week she got eight cents a box, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, picking onions for Jasper,

But this week Jasper dropped the pay to six cents a box because so many women and girls were answering the ads in the Daily News.

Jasper belongs to an Episcopal church in Ravenswood and on certain Sundays

He enjoys chanting the Nicene creed with his daughters on each side of him joining their voices with his.

If the preacher repeats old sermons of a Sunday, Jasper’s mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he can make it produce more efficiently

And sometimes he speculates on whether he could word an ad in the Daily News so it would bring more women and girls out to his farm and reduce operating costs.

Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti is far from desperate about life; her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in three months.