Shack DyeThe white men played all sorts of jokes on me.They took big fish off my hookAnd put little ones on, while I was awayGetting a stringer, and made me believeI hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught.When Burr Robbins circus came to townThey got the ring master to let a tame leopardInto the ring, and made me believeI was whipping a wild beast like SamsonWhen I, for an offer of fifty dollars,Dragged him out to his cage.One time I entered my blacksmith shopAnd shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawlingAcross the floor, as if alive—Walter Simmons had put a magnetUnder the barrel of water.Yet everyone of you, you white men,Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes didWhat moved you about Spoon River.
The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.They took big fish off my hookAnd put little ones on, while I was awayGetting a stringer, and made me believeI hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught.When Burr Robbins circus came to townThey got the ring master to let a tame leopardInto the ring, and made me believeI was whipping a wild beast like SamsonWhen I, for an offer of fifty dollars,Dragged him out to his cage.One time I entered my blacksmith shopAnd shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawlingAcross the floor, as if alive—Walter Simmons had put a magnetUnder the barrel of water.Yet everyone of you, you white men,Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes didWhat moved you about Spoon River.