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Title: The Malamute
Author: Yukon Bill [
More Titles by Bill]
Hi, there! Into your harness of thong!
(Whip.) You get into your place;
Give him the lash, Bill. Eh? What's wrong?
See that look in the mal'mute's face:--
Is it devilish cunning o'ermastering pain?
Some lost soul reincarnate again,
Running Sin's last race.
Come skulkin' into the camp last June,
A leprous, mangy cur;
Reasty and rotten--bayed at th' Moon
As if you'd a grudge 'gainst her.
All fester and soil--corruption and boil;
Your evil face like some carved gargoyle,
And you refused to stir
Though I broke th' lash on your back,
YOU subjugated me:--
You proved the master--I proved the hack,
For, plainly I could see
You'd been sent back to earth to work out y'r sin,
And y' came straight t' me, a larrikin;
An' why did you come to me?
What were you There? Unregenerate thief,
A derelict from your birth?
Were you a church-going pharisee,
That Belial of this earth?
Was your lecherous, lutish, animal mind
Drawn to me as one of your kind?
Your grin betrays your mirth.
Well, me an' you, Mal'mute, stand chums;
We won't each other despise;
The camp may call us a couple o' bums
But we hold our own assize:
We stand for Arbitration straight--
An' mebbe' some day, at St. Peter's Gate
We'll look in each other's eyes.
Ah, you leprous devil! you taught me how
To fumigate my soul
From wanton ways and dicing days,
And lush of the flowing bowl:
I'm steeped in guilt right up to the hilt,
Worshipped in temples of Shame I've built,
And Pleasure's been my goal,
But here with you in th' hinter-world
Where there's nothing pure but snow,
Some words long dumb t' my lips have come,
A prayer that I used to know:--
"OUR--FATHER!"--I wonder will HE refute
A fellow that learns of a malamute
T' take th' kick an' blow?
Oh, down here below we may go th' pace,
Loot, gut, palter, prey, maraud;
But here or There comes settling day,
For y' can't bamboozle God----
He'll send us back, like you, mal'mute,
Mangy an' whining--black with hell-soot----
Say, Bill, did y' see him nod?
[The end]
Yukon Bill's poem: Malamute
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