“just a slob like one of us / just a stranger on the bus / tryin’ to make his way home”

For Poetry Monday:

The Ticket Agent, Edmund Leamy

Like any merchant in a store
Who sells things by the pound or score,

He deals with scarce perfunctory glance
Small pass-keys to the world’s Romance.

He takes dull money, turns and hands
The roadways to far distant lands.

Bright shining rail and fenceless sea
Are partners to his wizardry.

He calls off names as if they were
Just names to cause no heart to stir.

For listening you’ll hear him say
“... and then to Aden and Bombay ...”

Or “... ’Frisco first and then to Nome,
Across the Rocky Mountains—Home ...”

And never catch of voice to tell
He knows the lure or feels the spell.

Like any salesman in a store,
He sells but tickets—nothing more.

And casual as any clerk
He deals in dreams, and calls it—work!


This is not the more famous Edmund Leamy (1848-1904) who was an Irish politician and writer, but another Edmund Leamy who was also born in Ireland (in 1889). Aside from that at some point he moved to New York, that he worked for a while as poetry editor for a New York newspaper, and that he wrote this poem, I’ve found very little about him.

---L.

Subject quote from One of Us, Joan Osborn.