The Right to Sorrow - Shokran

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow

Over the dead child of a millionaire

And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank

Which the millionaire might order his secretary to

Scratch off

And get cashed

Very well

You for your grief and I for mine

Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to

I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky

His job is sweeping blood off the floor

Now his three year old daughter

Is in a white coffin that cost him a week’s wages

Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty

Cents till the debt is wiped out

The hunky and his wife and the kids

Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box

They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills