Page 173

This page compresses poverty, drift, and desire into a blunt street-level vignette.

The tone is laconic and unsentimental. The title promises balance or proportion, but the body gives a scene of lack and distance, where the speaker watches what he cannot reach.

Under the ironic title 'The Long And The Short / Of It', three deadpan lines reduce a life to appetite and distance: 'Hobo'im and hoping for beer / While watching the women / walk the other way'. Desire and departure are bound in the same glance.