Six Long Hours in Los Angeles

Six long hours in Los Angeles! oh, my God!
What have I done that this should come to me,
Or I to this? What black iniquity
Sits on my soul, as heavy as a hod?
In depths of triple darkness have I trod,
But did not know abysms like this could be,
Horror on horror piled illimitably.
Thy glory is departed Ichabod.

And what shall it avail me now I pray
That once I strove with beasts in Omaha,
Billings, Mobile, Detroit, et cetera?
All is around me confusion and a blur.
I hear thy liquid accents, loway,
And see such blondes as gentlemen prefer.

Credit

Author

Leonard Bacon

Leonard Bacon, a poet, translator, critic, and professor, was born in 1887 in Solvay, New York. He came from a family of Congregationalist ministers, including the clergymen relatives for which he was named: his great-grandfather Reverend Leonard Bacon, a leader of the colonization movement in New Haven, and his grandfather, Leonard Woolsey Bacon. The younger Bacon studied at St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, then at Yale University, an institution to which his family was deeply connected. Five of his relatives served as members of the faculty.

Date Published

01/01/1927