Trainor the Druggist

Listen to:

Trainor the Druggist (:46)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

   Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
  What will result from compounding
  Fluids or solids.
  And who can tell
  How men and women will interact
  On each other, or what children will result?
  There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
  Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;
  He oxygen, she hydrogen,
  Their son, a devastating fire.
  I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
  Killed while making an experiment,
  Lived unwedded.