rOUGH hEMP aND bURLAP

I would give my right arm, shoulder, wrist and elbow, up to the crook, for a bowl of pinto beans and cruet; a commode of creamery corn and navy pods, simmered in a cistern thickened with allspice and cumin, a delectable Cornish rue. I would pay dearly for a heel of day-old bread, Pumpernickel or rye, a festive loaf pitted with raisins and currants, red, blue or green, some black as roofers’ tar, fennel root and caraway, Aquavit for the loom-wearied and downtrodden. I envy your foodstuffs and larder, your dinner plates stove with sweetmeats and rutabaga, a concomitant of potato, blue-kale and yam, a beanery of pot stickers and yellow-corn fritters. But alas, I eat stale yesterday’s and almost tomorrow’s, an armada of castaways and no-goods, an Upanishad of crabber-grass, hedge clippings and mulberry suet, a feast fit for a delouser or bootblack, a palsy-legged troubadour with ill-fitting dentures, stoma-eyes and a quail’s-foot hat made from oilcloth, rough hemp and burlap shims.