Lowry, Malcolm: Eye-Opener

How like a man, is Man, who rises late

and gazes on his unwashed dinner plate

and gazes on the bottles, empty too,

all gulphed in last night’s loud

                                       long how-do-you-do,

– Although one glass yet holds a gruesome bate –

How like to Man is this man and his fate –

still drunk and stumbling through the rusty trees

to breakfast on stale rum sardines and peas.