Chapin City Blues

When some cheese-headed ladder-climber reads 
    A poem of mine from the rostrum, 
Don’t Listen. That girl in her jersey and beads, 
    Second row from the front, has the original nostrum 
 
I blundered through nine hundred parties and ninety-eight pubs 
    In search of. The Words are a totem 
Erected long after the scholars and yobs 
    Who’d make, if they could, a bicycle-seat of my scrotum. 

James K. Baxter (1926-1972) was a New Zealand poet and playwright. His first collection of poetry, Beyond the Palisade, was published in 1944 when he was 17 years old. He was politically active and was known by his activism to preserve the Māori culture. He established a controversial commune which was named Jerusalem (in Māori Hiruhārama), where he was laid to rest upon his death. “To Any Young Man Who Hears My Verses Read In A Lecture Room” is found in James K. Baxter: Poems.