There’s a three-penny lunch on Dover Street
With a cardboard sign in the window: EAT.
Three steps down to the basement room,
Two gas lets in a sea of gloom;
Four-square counter, stove in the center,
Heavy odor of food as you enter;
A kettle of soup as large as a vat,
Potatoes, cabbage, morsels of fat
Bubbling up in a savory smoke-
Food for the gods when the gods are broke.
A wrecked divinity serving it up,
A hunk of bread and a steaming cup;
Three penny each, or two for a nickel;
An extra cent for a relish of pickle.
Slopping it up, no time for the graces-
Why should they care, these men with faces
Gaunt with hunger, battered with weather,
In walking the streets for days together?
No delicate sipping, no leisurely talk-
The rule of the place is Eat and Walk.
(James Norman Hall)
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