Sediment Tea

Down west-side central on a dog day's noon

'Round the ramshackle tenements of Tenth Avenue

Where the languid and the listless dawdle aimlessly in vain

Anaesthetised long to the summertime pain

The scents waft sweet down from room twenty-three

Where the harridan is brewing up a sediment tea

The crack pot whistles out a beckoning call

And the pigs spring hot from their noonday sprawl

And they clamber up the stairs on all threes and all fours

And they sniff and they scratch at the bottom of the door