The Church and the Hotel

Over the dead lake
And in a dusty sky
The full moon is speared by the spire of the Baptist church;
Or now it hangs over the Groveland Hotel:
I do not know whether it is over the spire
Or over the hotel.

In a dusty sky the moon
Is the bottom of a copper kettle
Which cannot be scoured into brightness.
The sky is a faded mosquito net
Over a brass cylinder cap
Dulled with verdigris.

Some years ago,
Not many years ago,
The Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
At the pulpit under this spire
With habitual regularity
Used to say:
Let us pray.
And the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
With habitual regularity
Used to preach
On the wages of sin.
And on Sunday evenings
As he was saying let us pray,
Ed Breen in Henry Hughes’ buffet,
There in the Groveland Hotel
Sitting with cronies at a table would say:
“Another round, Henry,
Bourbon for me.”

And at 7:30,
At the very moment
When the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
Was saying let us pray,
Ed Breen would be beginning the night,
And would be saying to Henry Hughes:
“Another round, Henry,
Bourbon for me.”

You, Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
Lived to a ripe age.
You lived to marry a second wife.
And you, Ed Breen, died in the thirties.
But whether it be better to have ptomaine poisoning
From eating cold chicken,
Or to drug yourself to death with bourbon
I will ask the moon.
For there is the moon
Like a German silver watch
Under a grimy show case.
I think it hangs as much over the hotel
As over the church.