The Vampire and the Poet by Charley L. Gant [Found Poetry]
There is a place that is deeply special to me. A place intimately entwined with the most important relationship in my life. I'll keep it anonymous out of of some sense of propriety towards that which I hold most dear. But on the walls of this place framed, is a poem from a newspaper by a local author that appears to be long out of print.
Simply posting here to help keep some record of his words that still ring true over a hundred years later.
I can only find reference to a two volume collection that this early Washington State resident, poet and newsman published as the "Songs of the Sea." Some digging shows the author Charley L. Gant was known as the "Songbird of the San Juan Archipelago", which I cant help finding delightful.
Bio: https://www.anacorteswa.gov/468/Charley-Gant
Sand Songs
The Vampire and the Poet
By Charley L. Gant
You grasp and greed for a million
Strong,I want no wealth but sing my song.
Which do you think, when the reaper
Comes,
With his sickle sharp and his muffled
drums,
Will be the richer, you with gold,
Or I with song of love unscrolled?
Your God is gold, you hear no cries
From the starving child that faints
And dies.
You set no headstones to the graves-
What care you for perished slaves-
But I come every living year,
With sympathy and song and tear.
Which do you think, when we come
To die,
Will be the richer, you or I?
You scheme for the golden god of
Wealth.
Gain the gold, but lose your health,
Though you have wealth 10,000 fold
You cannot buy good health with gold.
You cannot buy the worn out slaves
Your greed has placed in potters graves
And when we two shall cease to be,
Who’ll be richest, you or me?
O, man. With plenty laid in store,
Why scheme and steal and graft for
More,
While all about, the toiler stands
With empty larder, purse and hands?
There wails the widow in distress,
With none to comfort, none to bless,
And which, I ask, will richer be,
When life is over, you or she.
You bind your slave chains on the
Child,
How fiendishly you’ve often smiled.
While they with bleeding hands
Have toiled-
Your hands are ever golden soiled.
Their blood cries out from unmarked
Graves,
These long forgotten labor slaves,
But who’ll be richest in the end,
You or they, my golden friend?
The tyrant’s heel grinds labor low
Within the dust for greed of gold,
The lords of graft laugh at the woe-
The half of which has not been told,
And I can only sing my song-
To cheer the fallen by the way-
But which will be the weak and
Strong
If ever there’s a Judgment Day?
Our Motto: “No Boss to Serve. No Mission to Perform.”
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