Occupational Disease

And there are your great books.

Fitzgerald, he cracked-up and he fell.

Socrates, who never held pen,

Was by hemlock quelled.

Yet there are your great words.

Fathers and Sons, like Papa,

Like his father, like his men,

A shotgun has tolled.

But there are your great works.

A Poet with Lysol swallowed, burning pains and moans.

The fallen Nobel writer lying broken near Rome.

A lonely mind, dies of Bright’s, fallen amid book-bones.

The Call of the Wild lost to the soul that was alone.

On the drowning shore, a heart is snatched where fore it shown.

All who have died like that, may we say accident-prone?

Yes, the occupational hazards are well known

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