Tall sword of a man in a dark suit,
Intense eyes staring out suspiciously
From under a soft felt hat,
Slender-fingered gambler’s hands
Playing no one’s game but his own,
He never lied and never faked,
Walking proudly with maverick grace.
He preferred the honesty of silence
To the casual corruption of words,
Sifting truth from lies, trusting no one,
Turning from the random godless world
To alcohol, women and cards.
All was chaos and injustice,
But one brave man alone with his conscience
Could shore up the walls of civilisation
With small decent actions, futile, of course.
He eked out some precarious order
In terse astringent prose, sinews of thought
Bruised in the pugilistic onslaught;
There was a kind of honour in that.
Shadow man stalking the criminal streets,
Switchblade glint in his suffering eyes,
He had witnessed every kind of evil,
Had moved among thugs and racketeers,
Psychopaths and elegant con men,
Treading warily in a world of deception
And treachery, of sudden crazy violence.
Cynical loner in clever disguises,
He revelled in the cunning manhunt,
Tracking his prey from town to town,
Patient, resourceful, excited by danger.
He never believed in any kind of permanence,
Carried his life in a false-bottomed suitcase,
Out there in the real unromantic America
Where the good and the gentle got killed.
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