| MANY things I might have said today. | |
| And I kept my mouth shut. | |
| So many times I was asked | |
| To come and say the same things | |
| Everybody was saying, no end | 5 |
| To the yes-yes, yes-yes, me-too, me-too. | |
| |
| The aprons of silence covered me. | |
| A wire and hatch held my tongue. | |
| I spit nails into an abyss and listened. | |
| I shut off the gabble of Jones, Johnson, Smith. | 10 |
| All whose names take pages in the city directory. | |
| |
| I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around. | |
| I locked myself in and nobody knew it. | |
| Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow | |
| Knew it—on the streets, in the postoffice, | 15 |
| On the cars, into the railroad station | |
| Where the caller was calling, “All a-board, | |
| All a-board for .. Blaa-blaa .. Blaa-blaa, | |
| Blaa-blaa .. and all points northwest .. all a-board.” | |
| Here I took along my own hoosegow | 20 |
| And did business with my own thoughts. | |
| Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence. | |
