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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4332-8.txt b/4332-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a8ccd02 --- /dev/null +++ b/4332-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2628 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ghetto and Other Poems + +Author: Lola Ridge + +Posting Date: August 17, 2012 [EBook #4332] +Release Date: August, 2003 +First Posted: January 8, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHETTO AND OTHER POEMS *** + + + + +Produced by Catherine Daly + + + + + + + + + + The Ghetto + Lola Ridge + + TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE + + Will you feast with me, American People? + But what have I that shall seem good to you! + + On my board are bitter apples + And honey served on thorns, + And in my flagons fluid iron, + Hot from the crucibles. + + How should such fare entice you! + + CONTENTS + + The Ghetto + Manhattan + Broadway + Flotsam + Spring + Bowery Afternoon + Promenade + The Fog + Faces + Debris + Dedication + The Song of Iron + Frank Little at Calvary + Spires + The Legion of Iron + Fuel + A Toast + "The Everlasting Return," + Palestine + The Song + To the Others + Babel + The Fiddler + Dawn Wind + North Wind + The Destroyer + Lullaby + The Foundling + The Woman with Jewels + Submerged + Art and Life + Brooklyn Bridge + Dreams + The Fire + A Memory + The Edge + The Garden + Under-Song + A Worn Rose + Iron Wine + Dispossessed + The Star + The Tidings + +The larger part of the poem entitled "The Ghetto" appeared originally in +THE NEW REPUBLIC and some of poems were printed in THE INTERNATIONAL, +OTHERS, POETRY, etc. To the editors who first published the poems the +author makes due acknowledgment. + + + + THE GHETTO + + I + + Cool, inaccessible air + Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights, + But no breath stirs the heat + Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto + And most on Hester street... + + The heat... + Nosing in the body's overflow, + Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close, + Covering all avenues of air... + + The heat in Hester street, + Heaped like a dray + With the garbage of the world. + + Bodies dangle from the fire escapes + Or sprawl over the stoops... + Upturned faces glimmer pallidly-- + Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, + And moist faces of girls + Like dank white lilies, + And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air + as at empty teats. + + Young women pass in groups, + Converging to the forums and meeting halls, + Surging indomitable, slow + Through the gross underbrush of heat. + Their heads are uncovered to the stars, + And they call to the young men and to one another + With a free camaraderie. + Only their eyes are ancient and alone... + + The street crawls undulant, + Like a river addled + With its hot tide of flesh + That ever thickens. + Heavy surges of flesh + Break over the pavements, + Clavering like a surf-- + Flesh of this abiding + Brood of those ancient mothers who saw the dawn break over Egypt... + And turned their cakes upon the dry hot stones + And went on + Till the gold of the Egyptians fell down off their arms... + Fasting and athirst... + And yet on... + + Did they vision--with those eyes darkly clear, + That looked the sun in the face and were not blinded-- + Across the centuries + The march of their enduring flesh? + Did they hear-- + Under the molten silence + Of the desert like a stopped wheel-- + (And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand...) + The infinite procession of those feet? + + II + + I room at Sodos'--in the little green room that was Bennie's-- + With Sadie + And her old father and her mother, + Who is not so old and wears her own hair. + + Old Sodos no longer makes saddles. + He has forgotten how. + He has forgotten most things--even Bennie who stays away + and sends wine on holidays-- + And he does not like Sadie's mother + Who hides God's candles, + Nor Sadie + Whose young pagan breath puts out the light-- + That should burn always, + Like Aaron's before the Lord. + + Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, + And night by night + I see the love-gesture of his arm + In its green-greasy coat-sleeve + Circling the Book, + And the candles gleaming starkly + On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, + Like a miswritten psalm... + Night by night + I hear his lifted praise, + Like a broken whinnying + Before the Lord's shut gate. + + Sadie dresses in black. + She has black-wet hair full of cold lights + And a fine-drawn face, too white. + All day the power machines + Drone in her ears... + All day the fine dust flies + Till throats are parched and itch + And the heat--like a kept corpse-- + Fouls to the last corner. + + Then--when needles move more slowly on the cloth + And sweaty fingers slacken + And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes-- + Sped by some power within, + Sadie quivers like a rod... + A thin black piston flying, + One with her machine. + + She--who stabs the piece-work with her bitter eye + And bids the girls: "Slow down-- + You'll have him cutting us again!" + She--fiery static atom, + Held in place by the fierce pressure all about-- + Speeds up the driven wheels + And biting steel--that twice + Has nipped her to the bone. + + Nights, she reads + Those books that have most unset thought, + New-poured and malleable, + To which her thought + Leaps fusing at white heat, + Or spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall, + Or at a protest meeting on the Square, + Her lit eyes kindling the mob... + Or dances madly at a festival. + Each dawn finds her a little whiter, + Though up and keyed to the long day, + Alert, yet weary... like a bird + That all night long has beat about a light. + + The Gentile lover, that she charms and shrews, + Is one more pebble in the pack + For Sadie's mother, + Who greets him with her narrowed eyes + That hold some welcome back. + "What's to be done?" she'll say, + "When Sadie wants she takes... + Better than Bennie with his Christian woman... + A man is not so like, + If they should fight, + To call her Jew..." + + Yet when she lies in bed + And the soft babble of their talk comes to her + And the silences... + I know she never sleeps + Till the keen draught blowing up the empty hall + Edges through her transom + And she hears his foot on the first stairs. + + Sarah and Anna live on the floor above. + Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed. + Life for her has no ritual. + She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. + Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch. + If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear flame. + It is droll that she should work in a pants factory. + --Yet where else... tousled and collar awry at her olive throat. + Besides her hands are unkempt. + With English... and everything... there is so little time. + She reads without bias-- + Doubting clamorously-- + Psychology, plays, science, philosophies-- + Those giant flowers that have bloomed and withered, scattering their seed... + --And out of this young forcing soil what growth may come-- + what amazing blossomings. + + Anna is different. + One is always aware of Anna, and the young men turn their heads + to look at her. + She has the appeal of a folk-song + And her cheap clothes are always in rhythm. + When the strike was on she gave half her pay. + She would give anything--save the praise that is hers + And the love of her lyric body. + + But Sarah's desire covets nothing apart. + She would share all things... + Even her lover. + + III + + The sturdy Ghetto children + March by the parade, + Waving their toy flags, + Prancing to the bugles-- + Lusty, unafraid... + Shaking little fire sticks + At the night-- + The old blinking night-- + Swerving out of the way, + Wrapped in her darkness like a shawl. + + But a small girl + Cowers apart. + Her braided head, + Shiny as a black-bird's + In the gleam of the torch-light, + Is poised as for flight. + Her eyes have the glow + Of darkened lights. + + She stammers in Yiddish, + But I do not understand, + And there flits across her face + A shadow + As of a drawn blind. + I give her an orange, + Large and golden, + And she looks at it blankly. + I take her little cold hand and try to draw her to me, + But she is stiff... + Like a doll... + + Suddenly she darts through the crowd + Like a little white panic + Blown along the night-- + Away from the terror of oncoming feet... + And drums rattling like curses in red roaring mouths... + And torches spluttering silver fire + And lights that nose out hiding-places... + To the night-- + Squatting like a hunchback + Under the curved stoop-- + The old mammy-night + That has outlived beauty and knows the ways of fear-- + The night--wide-opening crooked and comforting arms, + Hiding her as in a voluminous skirt. + + The sturdy Ghetto children + March by the parade, + Waving their toy flags, + Prancing to the bugles, + Lusty, unafraid. + But I see a white frock + And eyes like hooded lights + Out of the shadow of pogroms + Watching... watching... + + IV + + Calicoes and furs, + Pocket-books and scarfs, + Razor strops and knives + (Patterns in check...) + + Olive hands and russet head, + Pickles red and coppery, + Green pickles, brown pickles, + (Patterns in tapestry...) + + Coral beads, blue beads, + Beads of pearl and amber, + Gewgaws, beauty pins-- + Bijoutry for chits-- + Darting rays of violet, + Amethyst and jade... + All the colors out to play, + Jumbled iridescently... + (Patterns in stained glass + Shivered into bits!) + + Nooses of gay ribbon + Tugging at one's sleeve, + Dainty little garters + Hanging out their sign... + Here a pout of frilly things-- + There a sonsy feather... + (White beards, black beards + Like knots in the weave...) + + And ah, the little babies-- + Shiny black-eyed babies-- + (Half a million pink toes + Wriggling altogether.) + Baskets full of babies + Like grapes on a vine. + + Mothers waddling in and out, + Making all things right-- + Picking up the slipped threads + In Grand street at night-- + Grand street like a great bazaar, + Crowded like a float, + Bulging like a crazy quilt + Stretched on a line. + + But nearer seen + This litter of the East + Takes on a garbled majesty. + + The herded stalls + In dissolute array... + The glitter and the jumbled finery + And strangely juxtaposed + Cans, paper, rags + And colors decomposing, + Faded like old hair, + With flashes of barbaric hues + And eyes of mystery... + Flung + Like an ancient tapestry of motley weave + Upon the open wall of this new land. + + Here, a tawny-headed girl... + Lemons in a greenish broth + And a huge earthen bowl + By a bronzed merchant + With a tall black lamb's wool cap upon his head... + He has no glance for her. + His thrifty eyes + Bend--glittering, intent + Their hoarded looks + Upon his merchandise, + As though it were some splendid cloth + Or sumptuous raiment + Stitched in gold and red... + + He seldom talks + Save of the goods he spreads-- + The meager cotton with its dismal flower-- + But with his skinny hands + That hover like two hawks + Above some luscious meat, + He fingers lovingly each calico, + As though it were a gorgeous shawl, + Or costly vesture + Wrought in silken thread, + Or strange bright carpet + Made for sandaled feet... + + Here an old grey scholar stands. + His brooding eyes-- + That hold long vistas without end + Of caravans and trees and roads, + And cities dwindling in remembrance-- + Bend mostly on his tapes and thread. + + What if they tweak his beard-- + These raw young seed of Israel + Who have no backward vision in their eyes-- + And mock him as he sways + Above the sunken arches of his feet-- + They find no peg to hang their taunts upon. + His soul is like a rock + That bears a front worn smooth + By the coarse friction of the sea, + And, unperturbed, he keeps his bitter peace. + + What if a rigid arm and stuffed blue shape, + Backed by a nickel star + Does prod him on, + Taking his proud patience for humility... + All gutters are as one + To that old race that has been thrust + From off the curbstones of the world... + And he smiles with the pale irony + Of one who holds + The wisdom of the Talmud stored away + In his mind's lavender. + + But this young trader, + Born to trade as to a caul, + Peddles the notions of the hour. + The gestures of the craft are his + And all the lore + As when to hold, withdraw, persuade, advance... + And be it gum or flags, + Or clean-all or the newest thing in tags, + Demand goes to him as the bee to flower. + And he--appraising + All who come and go + With his amazing + Slight-of-mind and glance + And nimble thought + And nature balanced like the scales at nought-- + Looks Westward where the trade-lights glow, + And sees his vision rise-- + A tape-ruled vision, + Circumscribed in stone-- + Some fifty stories to the skies. + + V + + As I sit in my little fifth-floor room-- + Bare, + Save for bed and chair, + And coppery stains + Left by seeping rains + On the low ceiling + And green plaster walls, + Where when night falls + Golden lady-bugs + Come out of their holes, + And roaches, sepia-brown, consort... + I hear bells pealing + Out of the gray church at Rutgers street, + Holding its high-flung cross above the Ghetto, + And, one floor down across the court, + The parrot screaming: + Vorwärts... Vorwärts... + + The parrot frowsy-white, + Everlastingly swinging + On its iron bar. + + A little old woman, + With a wig of smooth black hair + Gummed about her shrunken brows, + Comes sometimes on the fire escape. + An old stooped mother, + The left shoulder low + With that uneven droopiness that women know + Who have suckled many young... + Yet I have seen no other than the parrot there. + + I watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs + Feebly, with futile reach + And fingers without clutch. + Her thews are slack + And curved the ruined back + And flesh empurpled like old meat, + Yet each conspires + To feed those guttering fires + With which her eyes are quick. + + On Friday nights + Her candles signal + Infinite fine rays + To other windows, + Coupling other lights, + Linking the tenements + Like an endless prayer. + + She seems less lonely than the bird + That day by day about the dismal house + Screams out his frenzied word... + That night by night-- + If a dog yelps + Or a cat yawls + Or a sick child whines, + Or a door screaks on its hinges, + Or a man and woman fight-- + Sends his cry above the huddled roofs: + Vorwärts... Vorwärts... + + VI + + In this dingy cafe + The old men sit muffled in woollens. + Everything is faded, shabby, colorless, old... + The chairs, loose-jointed, + Creaking like old bones-- + The tables, the waiters, the walls, + Whose mottled plaster + Blends in one tone with the old flesh. + + Young life and young thought are alike barred, + And no unheralded noises jolt old nerves, + And old wheezy breaths + Pass around old thoughts, dry as snuff, + And there is no divergence and no friction + Because life is flattened and ground as by many mills. + + And it is here the Committee-- + Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin + And supple of spine and knee, + With shining unpouched eyes + And the blood, high-powered, + Leaping in flexible arteries-- + The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee, + Who would placard tombstones + And scatter leaflets even in graves, + Comes trampling with sacrilegious feet! + + The old men turn stiffly, + Mumbling to each other. + They are gentle and torpid and busy with eating. + But one lifts a face of clayish pallor, + There is a dull fury in his eyes, like little rusty grates. + He rises slowly, + Trembling in his many swathings like an awakened mummy, + Ridiculous yet terrible. + --And the Committee flings him a waste glance, + Dropping a leaflet by his plate. + + A lone fire flickers in the dusty eyes. + The lips chant inaudibly. + The warped shrunken body straightens like a tree. + And he curses... + With uplifted arms and perished fingers, + Claw-like, clutching... + So centuries ago + The old men cursed Acosta, + When they, prophetic, heard upon their sepulchres + Those feet that may not halt nor turn aside for ancient things. + + VII + + Here in this room, bare like a barn, + Egos gesture one to the other-- + Naked, unformed, unwinged + Egos out of the shell, + Examining, searching, devouring-- + Avid alike for the flower or the dung... + (Having no dainty antennae for the touch and withdrawal-- + Only the open maw...) + + Egos cawing, + Expanding in the mean egg... + Little squat tailors with unkempt faces, + Pale as lard, + Fur-makers, factory-hands, shop-workers, + News-boys with battling eyes + And bodies yet vibrant with the momentum of long runs, + Here and there a woman... + + Words, words, words, + Pattering like hail, + Like hail falling without aim... + Egos rampant, + Screaming each other down. + One motions perpetually, + Waving arms like overgrowths. + He has burning eyes and a cough + And a thin voice piping + Like a flute among trombones. + + One, red-bearded, rearing + A welter of maimed face bashed in from some old wound, + Garbles Max Stirner. + His words knock each other like little wooden blocks. + No one heeds him, + And a lank boy with hair over his eyes + Pounds upon the table. + --He is chairman. + + Egos yet in the primer, + Hearing world-voices + Chanting grand arias... + Majors resonant, + Stunning with sound... + Baffling minors + Half-heard like rain on pools... + Majestic discordances + Greater than harmonies... + --Gleaning out of it all + Passion, bewilderment, pain... + + Egos yearning with the world-old want in their eyes-- + Hurt hot eyes that do not sleep enough... + Striving with infinite effort, + Frustrate yet ever pursuing + The great white Liberty, + Trailing her dissolving glory over each hard-won barricade-- + Only to fade anew... + + Egos crying out of unkempt deeps + And waving their dreams like flags-- + Multi-colored dreams, + Winged and glorious... + + A gas jet throws a stunted flame, + Vaguely illumining the groping faces. + And through the uncurtained window + Falls the waste light of stars, + As cold as wise men's eyes... + Indifferent great stars, + Fortuitously glancing + At the secret meeting in this shut-in room, + Bare as a manger. + + VIII + + Lights go out + And the stark trunks of the factories + Melt into the drawn darkness, + Sheathing like a seamless garment. + + And mothers take home their babies, + Waxen and delicately curled, + Like little potted flowers closed under the stars. + + Lights go out + And the young men shut their eyes, + But life turns in them... + + Life in the cramped ova + Tearing and rending asunder its living cells... + Wars, arts, discoveries, rebellions, travails, immolations, + cataclysms, hates... + Pent in the shut flesh. + And the young men twist on their beds in languor and dizziness + unsupportable... + Their eyes--heavy and dimmed + With dust of long oblivions in the gray pulp behind-- + Staring as through a choked glass. + And they gaze at the moon--throwing off a faint heat-- + The moon, blond and burning, creeping to their cots + Softly, as on naked feet... + Lolling on the coverlet... like a woman offering her white body. + + Nude glory of the moon! + That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped + of their linens; + Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl + Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them. + They shudder and grow faint. + And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody, + That Life, like a drunken player, + Strikes out of their clear white bodies + As out of ivory keys. + + Lights go out... + And the great lovers linger in little groups, still passionately debating, + Or one may walk in silence, listening only to the still summons of Life-- + Life making the great Demand... + Calling its new Christs... + Till tears come, blurring the stars + That grow tender and comforting like the eyes of comrades; + And the moon rolls behind the Battery + Like a word molten out of the mouth of God. + + Lights go out... + And colors rush together, + Fusing and floating away... + Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels... + Mauves, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples + And burning spires in aureoles of light + Like shimmering auras. + + They are covering up the pushcarts... + Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors-- + Little oval mirrors like tiny pools. + He shuffles up a darkened street + And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus... + The moon like a skull, + Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts. + + IX + + A sallow dawn is in the sky + As I enter my little green room. + Sadie's light is still burning... + Without, the frail moon + Worn to a silvery tissue, + Throws a faint glamour on the roofs, + And down the shadowy spires + Lights tip-toe out... + Softly as when lovers close street doors. + + Out of the Battery + A little wind + Stirs idly--as an arm + Trails over a boat's side in dalliance-- + Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat, + And Hester street, + Like a forlorn woman over-born + By many babies at her teats, + Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day. + + LIFE! + Startling, vigorous life, + That squirms under my touch, + And baffles me when I try to examine it, + Or hurls me back without apology. + Leaving my ego ruffled and preening itself. + + Life, + Articulate, shrill, + Screaming in provocative assertion, + Or out of the black and clotted gutters, + Piping in silvery thin + Sweet staccato + Of children's laughter, + + Or clinging over the pushcarts + Like a litter of tiny bells + Or the jingle of silver coins, + Perpetually changing hands, + Or like the Jordan somberly + Swirling in tumultuous uncharted tides, + Surface-calm. + + Electric currents of life, + Throwing off thoughts like sparks, + Glittering, disappearing, + Making unknown circuits, + Or out of spent particles stirring + Feeble contortions in old faiths + Passing before the new. + + Long nights argued away + In meeting halls + Back of interminable stairways-- + In Roumanian wine-shops + And little Russian tea-rooms... + + Feet echoing through deserted streets + In the soft darkness before dawn... + Brows aching, throbbing, burning-- + Life leaping in the shaken flesh + Like flame at an asbestos curtain. + + Life-- + Pent, overflowing + Stoops and façades, + Jostling, pushing, contriving, + Seething as in a great vat... + + Bartering, changing, extorting, + Dreaming, debating, aspiring, + Astounding, indestructible + Life of the Ghetto... + + Strong flux of life, + Like a bitter wine + Out of the bloody stills of the world... + Out of the Passion eternal. + + + MANHATTAN LIGHTS + + MANHATTAN + + Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, + In a vesture of gold-- + Span of innumerable arcs, + Flaring and multiplying-- + Gold at the uttermost circles fading + Into the tenderest hint of jade, + Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, + Robing the far-flung offices, + Scintillant-storied, forking flame, + Or soaring to luminous amethyst + Over the steeples aureoled-- + + Diaphanous gold, + Veiling the Woolworth, argently + Rising slender and stark + Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry, + And towers squatting graven and cold + On the velvet bales of the dark, + And the Singer's appraising + Indolent idol's eye, + And night like a purple cloth unrolled-- + + Nebulous gold + Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, + Wherein you burn... + You of unknown voltage + Whirling on your axis... + Scrawling vermillion signatures + Over the night's velvet hoarding... + Insolent, towering spherical + To apices ever shifting. + + BROADWAY + + Light! + Innumerable ions of light, + Kindling, irradiating, + All to their foci tending... + + Light that jingles like anklet chains + On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet, + Or clingles in myriad vibrations + Like trillions of porcelain + Vases shattering... + + Light over the laminae of roofs, + Diffusing in shimmering nebulae + About the night's boundaries, + Or billowing in pearly foam + Submerging the low-lying stars... + + Light for the feast prolonged-- + Captive light in the goblets quivering... + Sparks evanescent + Struck of meeting looks-- + Fringed eyelids leashing + Sheathed and leaping lights... + Infinite bubbles of light + Bursting, reforming... + Silvery filings of light + Incessantly falling... + Scintillant, sided dust of light + Out of the white flares of Broadway-- + Like a great spurious diamond + In the night's corsage faceted... + + Broadway, + In ambuscades of light, + Drawing the charmed multitudes + With the slow suction of her breath-- + Dangling her naked soul + Behind the blinding gold of eunuch lights + That wind about her like a bodyguard. + + Or like a huge serpent, iridescent-scaled, + Trailing her coruscating length + Over the night prostrate-- + Triumphant poised, + Her hydra heads above the avenues, + Values appraising + And her avid eyes + Glistening with eternal watchfulness... + + Broadway-- + Out of her towers rampant, + Like an unsubtle courtezan + Reserving nought for some adventurous night. + + FLOTSAM + + Crass rays streaming from the vestibules; + Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth; + High-flung signs + Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes; + Girls in black + Circling monotonously + About the orange lights... + + Nothing to guess at... + Save the darkness above + Crouching like a great cat. + + In the dim-lit square, + Where dishevelled trees + Tustle with the wind--the wind like a scythe + Mowing their last leaves-- + Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze-- + Pale oval arcs + Like ailing virgins, + Each out of a halo circumscribed, + Pallidly staring... + + Figures drift upon the benches + With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling-- + Slovenly figures like untied parcels, + And papers wrapped about their knees + Huddled one to the other, + Cringing to the wind-- + The sided wind, + Leaving no breach untried... + + So many and all so still... + The fountain slobbering its stone basin + Is louder than They-- + Flotsam of the five oceans + Here on this raft of the world. + + This old man's head + Has found a woman's shoulder. + The wind juggles with her shawl + That flaps about them like a sail, + And splashes her red faded hair + Over the salt stubble of his chin. + A light foam is on his lips, + As though dreams surged in him + Breaking and ebbing away... + And the bare boughs shuffle above him + And the twigs rattle like dice... + + She--diffused like a broken beetle-- + Sprawls without grace, + Her face gray as asphalt, + Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges... + Shadows ply about her mouth-- + Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree, + That dances above her its dance of dry bones. + + II + + A uniformed front, + Paunched; + A glance like a blow, + The swing of an arm, + Verved, vigorous; + Boot-heels clanking + In metallic rhythm; + The blows of a baton, + Quick, staccato... + + --There is a rustling along the benches + As of dried leaves raked over... + And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand, + Tucking the displaced paper about his knees. + + Colder... + And a frost under foot, + Acid, corroding, + Eating through worn bootsoles. + + Drab forms blur into greenish vapor. + Through boughs like cross-bones, + Pale arcs flare and shiver + Like lilies in a wind. + + High over Broadway + A far-flung sign + Glitters in indigo darkness + And spurts again rhythmically, + Spraying great drops + Red as a hemorrhage. + + SPRING + + A spring wind on the Bowery, + Blowing the fluff of night shelters + Off bedraggled garments, + And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor + Like lewd growths. + + Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other, + One--with a choir-boy's face + Twits me as I pass... + The word, like a muddied drop, + Seems to roll over and not out of + The bowed lips, + Yet dewy red + And sweetly immature. + + People sniff the air with an upward look-- + Even the mite of a girl + Who never plays... + Her mother smiles at her + With eyes like vacant lots + Rimming vistas of mean streets + And endless washing days... + Yet with sun on the lines + And a drying breeze. + + The old candy woman + Shivers in the young wind. + Her eyes--littered with memories + Like ancient garrets, + Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died-- + Ask nothing of the spring. + + But a pale pink dream + Trembles about this young girl's body, + Draping it like a glowing aura. + + She gloats in a mirror + Over her gaudy hat, + With its flower God never thought of... + + And the dream, unrestrained, + Floats about the loins of a soldier, + Where it quivers a moment, + Warming to a crimson + Like the scarf of a toreador... + + But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact + And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose. + + BOWERY AFTERNOON + + Drab discoloration + Of faces, façades, pawn-shops, + Second-hand clothing, + Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms, + Odors of rancid life... + + Deadly uniformity + Of eyes and windows + Alike devoid of light... + Holes wherein life scratches-- + Mangy life + Nosing to the gutter's end... + + Show-rooms and mimic pillars + Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules + Bosoms and posturing thighs... + + Over all the Elevated + Droning like a bloated fly. + + PROMENADE + + Undulant rustlings, + Of oncoming silk, + Rhythmic, incessant, + Like the motion of leaves... + Fragments of color + In glowing surprises... + Pink inuendoes + Hooded in gray + Like buds in a cobweb + Pearled at dawn... + Glimpses of green + And blurs of gold + And delicate mauves + That snatch at youth... + And bodies all rosily + Fleshed for the airing, + In warm velvety surges + Passing imperious, slow... + + Women drift into the limousines + That shut like silken caskets + On gems half weary of their glittering... + Lamps open like pale moon flowers... + Arcs are radiant opals + Strewn along the dusk... + No common lights invade. + And spires rise like litanies-- + Magnificats of stone + Over the white silence of the arcs, + Burning in perpetual adoration. + + THE FOG + + Out of the lamp-bestarred and clouded dusk-- + Snaring, illuding, concealing, + Magically conjuring-- + Turning to fairy-coaches + Beetle-backed limousines + Scampering under the great Arch-- + Making a decoy of blue overalls + And mystery of a scarlet shawl-- + Indolently-- + Knowing no impediment of its sure advance-- + Descends the fog. + + FACES + + A late snow beats + With cold white fists upon the tenements-- + Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters, + Like tall old slatterns + Pulling aprons about their heads. + + Lights slanting out of Mott Street + Gibber out, + Or dribble through bar-room slits, + Anonymous shapes + Conniving behind shuttered panes + Caper and disappear... + Where the Bowery + Is throbbing like a fistula + Back of her ice-scabbed fronts. + + Livid faces + Glimmer in furtive doorways, + Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys, + Smears of faces like muddied beads, + Making a ghastly rosary + The night mumbles over + And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper... + Patrolling arcs + Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line + Stalk them as they pass, + Silent as though accouched of the darkness, + And the wind noses among them, + Like a skunk + That roots about the heart... + + Colder: + And the Elevated slams upon the silence + Like a ponderous door. + Then all is still again, + Save for the wind fumbling over + The emptily swaying faces-- + The wind rummaging + Like an old Jew... + + Faces in glimmering rows... + (No sign of the abject life-- + Not even a blasphemy...) + But the spindle legs keep time + To a limping rhythm, + And the shadows twitch upon the snow + Convulsively-- + As though death played + With some ungainly dolls. + + + LABOR + + DEBRIS + + I love those spirits + That men stand off and point at, + Or shudder and hood up their souls-- + Those ruined ones, + Where Liberty has lodged an hour + And passed like flame, + Bursting asunder the too small house. + + DEDICATION + + I would be a torch unto your hand, + A lamp upon your forehead, Labor, + In the wild darkness before the Dawn + That I shall never see... + + We shall advance together, my Beloved, + Awaiting the mighty ushering... + Together we shall make the last grand charge + And ride with gorgeous Death + With all her spangles on + And cymbals clashing... + And you shall rush on exultant as I fall-- + Scattering a brief fire about your feet... + + Let it be so... + Better--while life is quick + And every pain immense and joy supreme, + And all I have and am + Flames upward to the dream... + Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn, + Burning out the wick. + + THE SONG OF IRON + + I + + Not yet hast Thou sounded + Thy clangorous music, + Whose strings are under the mountains... + Not yet hast Thou spoken + The blooded, implacable Word... + + But I hear in the Iron singing-- + In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding-- + Thy barbaric exhortation... + And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved, + Answering Thy call... + All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice, + And sings exultant with the Iron, + For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen... + + Oh fashioned in fire-- + Needing flame for Thy ultimate word-- + Behold me, a cupola + Poured to Thy use! + + Heed not my tremulous body + That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet. + Break it... and cast it aside... + But make of my spirit + That dares and endures + Thy crucible... + Pour through my soul + Thy molten, world-whelming song. + + ... Here at Thy uttermost gate + Like a new Mary, I wait... + + II + + Charge the blast furnace, workman... + Open the valves-- + Drive the fires high... + (Night is above the gates). + + How golden-hot the ore is + From the cupola spurting, + Tossing the flaming petals + Over the silt and furnace ash-- + Blown leaves, devastating, + Falling about the world... + + Out of the furnace mouth-- + Out of the giant mouth-- + The raging, turgid, mouth-- + Fall fiery blossoms + Gold with the gold of buttercups + In a field at sunset, + Or huskier gold of dandelions, + Warmed in sun-leavings, + Or changing to the paler hue + At the creamy hearts of primroses. + + Charge the converter, workman-- + Tired from the long night? + But the earth shall suck up darkness-- + The earth that holds so much... + And out of these molten flowers, + Shall shape the heavy fruit... + + Then open the valves-- + Drive the fires high, + Your blossoms nurturing. + (Day is at the gates + And a young wind...) + + Put by your rod, comrade, + And look with me, shading your eyes... + Do you not see-- + Through the lucent haze + Out of the converter rising-- + In the spirals of fire + Smiting and blinding, + A shadowy shape + White as a flame of sacrifice, + Like a lily swaying? + + III + + The ore leaping in the crucibles, + The ore communicant, + Sending faint thrills along the leads... + Fire is running along the roots of the mountains... + I feel the long recoil of earth + As under a mighty quickening... + (Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron...) + All palpitant, I wait... + + + IV + + Here ye, Dictators--late Lords of the Iron, + Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered-- + The blooded, implacable Word? + Not whispered in cloture, one to the other, + (Brother in fear of the fear of his brother...) + But chanted and thundered + On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron + Babbling in flame... + + Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled, + Manacles riven and ramparts defaced... + (Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling...) + Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced... + + Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning... + Clangor of iron smashing on iron, + Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying + Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder... + + Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring, + Battering egress through ramparted walls... + Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power, + Into the holocaust snorting and plunging... + + Mighty converters torn from their axis, + Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire, + Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen... + Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron... + + Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying... + Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending... + Shock of leviathans prone on each other... + Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore... + Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying + In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron, + Tasting the turbulent fury of living, + Mad with a moment's exuberant living! + Crash of devastating hammers despoiling.. + Hands inexorable, marring + What hands had so cunningly moulded... + + Structures of steel welded, subtily tempered, + Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore, + Torn into octaves discordantly clashing, + Chords never final but onward progressing + In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound + in mad vortices whirling... + + Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation + Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling... + The fierce obligato the steel pipes are screaming... + The blare of the rude molten music of Iron... + + FRANK LITTLE AT CALVARY + + I + + He walked under the shadow of the Hill + Where men are fed into the fires + And walled apart... + Unarmed and alone, + He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth + Where tools rested on the floors + And great cranes swung + Unemptied, on the iron girders. + And they, who were the Lords of the Hill, + Were seized with a great fear, + When they heard out of the silence of wheels + The answer ringing + In endless reverberations + Under the mountain... + + So they covered up their faces + And crept upon him as he slept... + Out of eye-holes in black cloth + They looked upon him who had flung + Between them and their ancient prey + The frail barricade of his life... + And when night--that has connived at so much-- + Was heavy with the unborn day, + They haled him from his bed... + + Who might know of that wild ride? + Only the bleak Hill-- + The red Hill, vigilant, + Like a blood-shot eye + In the black mask of night-- + Dared watch them as they raced + By each blind-folded street + Godiva might have ridden down... + But when they stopped beside the Place, + I know he turned his face + Wistfully to the accessory night... + + And when he saw--against the sky, + Sagged like a silken net + Under its load of stars-- + The black bridge poised + Like a gigantic spider motionless... + I know there was a silence in his heart, + As of a frozen sea, + Where some half lifted arm, mid-way + Wavers, and drops heavily... + + I know he waved to life, + And that life signaled back, transcending space, + To each high-powered sense, + So that he missed no gesture of the wind + Drawing the shut leaves close... + So that he saw the light on comrades' faces + Of camp fires out of sight... + And the savor of meat and bread + Blew in his nostrils... and the breath + Of unrailed spaces + Where shut wild clover smelled as sweet + As a virgin in her bed. + + I know he looked once at America, + Quiescent, with her great flanks on the globe, + And once at the skies whirling above him... + Then all that he had spoken against + And struck against and thrust against + Over the frail barricade of his life + Rushed between him and the stars... + + II + + Life thunders on... + Over the black bridge + The line of lighted cars + Creeps like a monstrous serpent + Spooring gold... + + Watchman, what of the track? + + Night... silence... stars... + All's Well! + + III + + Light... + (Breaking mists... + Hills gliding like hands out of a slipping hold...) + Light over the pit mouths, + Streaming in tenuous rays down the black gullets of the Hill... + (The copper, insensate, sleeping in the buried lode.) + Light... + Forcing the clogged windows of arsenals... + Probing with long sentient fingers in the copper chips... + Gleaming metallic and cold + In numberless slivers of steel... + Light over the trestles and the iron clips + Of the black bridge--poised like a gigantic spider motionless-- + Sweet inquisition of light, like a child's wonder... + Intrusive, innocently staring light + That nothing appals... + + Light in the slow fumbling summer leaves, + Cooing and calling + All winged and avid things + Waking the early flies, keen to the scent... + Green-jeweled iridescent flies + Unerringly steering-- + Swarming over the blackened lips, + The young day sprays with indiscriminate gold... + + Watchman, what of the Hill? + + Wheels turn; + The laden cars + Go rumbling to the mill, + And Labor walks beside the mules... + All's Well with the Hill! + + SPIRES + + Spires of Grace Church, + For you the workers of the world + Travailed with the mountains... + Aborting their own dreams + Till the dream of you arose-- + Beautiful, swaddled in stone-- + Scorning their hands. + + THE LEGION OF IRON + + They pass through the great iron gates-- + Men with eyes gravely discerning, + Skilled to appraise the tunnage of cranes + Or split an inch into thousandths-- + Men tempered by fire as the ore is + And planned to resistance + Like steel that has cooled in the trough; + Silent of purpose, inflexible, set to fulfilment-- + To conquer, withstand, overthrow... + Men mannered to large undertakings, + Knowing force as a brother + And power as something to play with, + Seeing blood as a slip of the iron, + To be wiped from the tools + Lest they rust. + + But what if they stood aside, + Who hold the earth so careless in the crook of their arms? + + What of the flamboyant cities + And the lights guttering out like candles in a wind... + And the armies halted... + And the train mid-way on the mountain + And idle men chaffing across the trenches... + And the cursing and lamentation + And the clamor for grain shut in the mills of the world? + What if they stayed apart, + Inscrutably smiling, + Leaving the ground encumbered with dead wire + And the sea to row-boats + And the lands marooned-- + Till Time should like a paralytic sit, + A mildewed hulk above the nations squatting? + + FUEL + + What of the silence of the keys + And silvery hands? The iron sings... + Though bows lie broken on the strings, + The fly-wheels turn eternally... + + Bring fuel--drive the fires high... + Throw all this artist-lumber in + And foolish dreams of making things... + (Ten million men are called to die.) + + As for the common men apart, + Who sweat to keep their common breath, + And have no hour for books or art-- + What dreams have these to hide from death! + + A TOAST + + Not your martyrs anointed of heaven-- + The ages are red where they trod-- + But the Hunted--the world's bitter leaven-- + Who smote at your imbecile God-- + + A being to pander and fawn to, + To propitiate, flatter and dread + As a thing that your souls are in pawn to, + A Dealer who traffics the dead; + + A Trader with greed never sated, + Who barters the souls in his snares, + That were trapped in the lusts he created, + For incense and masses and prayers-- + + They are crushed in the coils of your halters; + 'Twere well--by the creeds ye have nursed-- + That ye send up a cry from your altars, + A mass for the Martyrs Accursed; + + A passionate prayer from reprieval + For the Brotherhood not understood-- + For the Heroes who died for the evil, + Believing the evil was good. + + To the Breakers, the Bold, the Despoilers, + Who dreamed of a world over-thrown... + They who died for the millions of toilers-- + Few--fronting the nations alone! + + --To the Outlawed of men and the Branded, + Whether hated or hating they fell-- + I pledge the devoted, red-handed, + Unfaltering Heroes of Hell! + + + ACCIDENTALS + + "THE EVERLASTING RETURN" + + It is dark... so dark, I remember the sun on Chios... + It is still... so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean... + + Ten times we had watched the moon + Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters + And round into a full maternity... + For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh + Save the man flesh on either hand + That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea. + + The Athenian boy sat on my left... + His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine... + And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian, + Grinning Phildar + With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth. + Many a whip had coiled about him + And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels, + And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun. + He did not sing like the other slaves, + But when a big wind came up he screamed with it. + And always he looked out to sea, + Save when he tore at his fish ends + Or spat across me at the Greek boy, whose mouth was red and apart + like an opened fruit. + + We had rowed from dawn and the green galley hard at our stern. + She was green and squat and skulked close to the sea. + All day the tish of their paddles had tickled our ears, + And when night came on + And little naked stars dabbled in the water + And half the crouching moon + Slid over the silver belly of the sea thick-scaled with light, + We heard them singing at their oars... + We who had no breath for song. + + There was no sound in our boat + Save the clingle of wrist chains + And the sobbing of the young Greek. + I cursed him that his hair blew in my mouth, tasting salt of the sea... + I cursed him that his oar kept ill time... + When he looked at me I cursed him again, + That his eyes were soft as a woman's. + + How long... since their last shell gouged our batteries? + How long... since we rose at aim with a sleuth moon astern? + (It was the damned green moon that nosed us out... + The moon that flushed our periscope till it shone like a silver flame...) + + They loosed each man's right hand + As the galley spent on our decks... + And amazed and bloodied we reared half up + And fought askew with the left hand shackled... + But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets + And knotted our thews like string... + Our thews grown stiff as a crooked spine that would not straighten... + + How long... since our gauges fell + And the sea shoved us under? + It is dark... so dark... + Darkness presses hairy-hot + Where three make crowded company... + And the rank steel smells.... + It is still... so still... + I seem to hear the wind + On the dimpled face of the water fathoms above... + + + It was still... so still... we three that were left alive + Stared in each other's faces... + But three make bitter company at one man's bread... + And our hate grew sharp and bright as the moon's edge in the water. + + One grinned with his mouth awry from the long gapped teeth... + And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over... + But one struck with his hate in his hand... + + After that I remember + Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea... + The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues. + + It is still... so still, with the jargon of engines quiet. + We three awaiting the crunch of the sea + Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces... + We three sheathing hate in our hearts... + But when hate shall have made its circuit, + Our bones will be loving company + Here in the sea's den... + And one whimpers and cries on his God + And one sits sullenly + But both draw away from me... + For I am the pyre their memories burn on... + Like black flames leaping + Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea... + The sea that kneels above us... + And makes no sign. + + PALESTINE + + Old plant of Asia-- + Mutilated vine + Holding earth's leaping sap + In every stem and shoot + That lopped off, sprouts again-- + Why should you seek a plateau walled about, + Whose garden is the world? + + THE SONG + + That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks + on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron, + And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine + floating like cotton-down, + And the harsh and terrible screaming, + And that strange vibration at the roots of us... + Desire, fierce, like a song... + And we heard + (Do you remember?) + All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue + And bugles in little home towns + And children's harmonicas bleating + + America! + + And after... + (Do you remember?) + The drollery of the wind on our faces, + And horizons reeling, + And the terror of the plain + Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun... + Under us--threshing and twanging + Torn-up roots of the Song... + + TO THE OTHERS + + I see you, refulgent ones, + Burning so steadily + Like big white arc lights... + There are so many of you. + I like to watch you weaving-- + Altogether and with precision + Each his ray-- + Your tracery of light, + Making a shining way about America. + + I note your infinite reactions-- + In glassware + And sequin + And puddles + And bits of jet-- + And here and there a diamond... + + But you do not yet see me, + Who am a torch blown along the wind, + Flickering to a spark + But never out. + + BABEL + + Oh, God did cunningly, there at Babel-- + Not mere tongues dividing, but soul from soul, + So that never again should men be able + To fashion one infinite, towering whole. + + THE FIDDLER + + In a little Hungarian cafe + Men and women are drinking + Yellow wine in tall goblets. + + Through the milky haze of the smoke, + The fiddler, under-sized, blond, + Leans to his violin + As to the breast of a woman. + Red hair kindles to fire + On the black of his coat-sleeve, + Where his white thin hand + Trembles and dives, + Like a sliver of moonlight, + When wind has broken the water. + + DAWN WIND + + Wind, just arisen-- + (Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss + In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars, + Or niche of cliff under the eagles?) + You of living things, + So gay and tender and full of play-- + Why do you blow on my thoughts--like cut flowers + Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood? + + I see you + Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation + And frisking away, + Deliciously rumpling the grass... + + So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle, + Prattling of fields + Before I had had my milk... + Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One? + I--swaddled, unwinged, like a bird in the egg. + + Let be + My dreams that crackle under your breath... + You have the dust of the world to blow on... + Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... + I am too old to play with you, + Eternal Child. + + NORTH WIND + + I love you, malcontent + Male wind-- + Shaking the pollen from a flower + Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand. + + Blow on and over my dreams... + Scatter my sick dreams... + Throw your lusty arms about me... + Envelop all my hot body... + Carry me to pine forests-- + Great, rough-bearded forests... + Bring me to stark plains and steppes... + I would have the North to-night-- + The cold, enduring North. + + And if we should meet the Snow, + Whirling in spirals, + And he should blind my eyes... + Ally, you will defend me-- + You will hold me close, + Blowing on my eyelids. + + THE DESTROYER + + I am of the wind... + A wisp of the battering wind... + + I trail my fingers along the Alps + And an avalanche falls in my wake... + I feel in my quivering length + When it buries the hamlet beneath... + + I hurriedly sweep aside + The cities that clutter our path... + As we whirl about the circle of the globe... + As we tear at the pillars of the world... + Open to the wind, + The Destroyer! + The wind that is battering at your gates. + + LULLABY + + Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown... + (There's a shout at the door an' a big red light...) + Lil' coon baby, mammy is down... + Han's that hold yuh are steady an' white... + + Look piccaninny--such a gran' blaze + Lickin' up the roof an' the sticks of home-- + Ever see the like in all yo' days! + --Cain't yuh sleep, mah bit-of-honey-comb? + + Rock-a-by baby, up to the sky! + Look at the cherries driftin' by-- + Bright red cherries spilled on the groun'-- + Piping-hot cherries at nuthin' a poun'! + + Hush, mah lil' black-bug--doan yuh weep. + Daddy's run away an' mammy's in a heap + By her own fron' door in the blazin' heat + Outah the shacks like warts on the street... + + An' the singin' flame an' the gleeful crowd + Circlin' aroun'... won't mammy be proud! + With a stone at her hade an' a stone on her heart, + An' her mouth like a red plum, broken apart... + + See where the blue an' khaki prance, + Adding brave colors to the dance + About the big bonfire white folks make-- + Such gran' doin's fo' a lil' coon's sake! + + Hear all the eagah feet runnin' in town-- + See all the willin' han's reach outah night-- + Han's that are wonderful, steady an' white! + To toss up a lil' babe, blinkin' an' brown... + + Rock-a-by baby--higher an' higher! + Mammy is sleepin' an' daddy's run lame... + (Soun' may yuh sleep in yo' cradle o' fire!) + Rock-a-by baby, hushed in the flame... + +(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women +flung a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.) + + THE FOUNDLING + + Snow wraiths circle us + Like washers of the dead, + Flapping their white wet cloths + Impatiently + About the grizzled head, + Where the coarse hair mats like grass, + And the efficient wind + With cold professional baste + Probes like a lancet + Through the cotton shirt... + + About us are white cliffs and space. + No façades show, + Nor roof nor any spire... + All sheathed in snow... + The parasitic snow + That clings about them like a blight. + + Only detached lights + Float hazily like greenish moons, + And endlessly + Down the whore-street, + Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm, + The blizzard waltzes with the night. + + THE WOMAN WITH JEWELS + + The woman with jewels sits in the cafe, + Spraying light like a fountain. + Diamonds glitter on her bulbous fingers + And on her arms, great as thighs, + Diamonds gush from her ear-lobes over the goitrous throat. + She is obesely beautiful. + Her eyes are full of bleared lights, + Like little pools of tar, spilled by a sailor in mad haste for shore... + And her mouth is scarlet and full--only a little crumpled-- + like a flower that has been pressed apart... + + Why does she come alone to this obscure basement-- + She who should have a litter and hand-maidens to support her + on either side? + + She ascends the stairway, and the waiters turn to look at her, + spilling the soup. + The black satin dress is a little lifted, showing the dropsical legs + in their silken fleshings... + The mountainous breasts tremble... + There is an agitation in her gems, + That quiver incessantly, emitting trillions of fiery rays... + She erupts explosive breaths... + Every step is an adventure + From this... + The serpent's tooth + Saved Cleopatra. + + SUBMERGED + + I have known only my own shallows-- + Safe, plumbed places, + Where I was wont to preen myself. + + But for the abyss + I wanted a plank beneath + And horizons... + + I was afraid of the silence + And the slipping toe-hold... + + Oh, could I now dive + Into the unexplored deeps of me-- + Delve and bring up and give + All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, + That is yet the best. + + ART AND LIFE + + When Art goes bounding, lean, + Up hill-tops fired green + To pluck a rose for life. + + Life like a broody hen + Cluck-clucks him back again. + + But when Art, imbecile, + Sits old and chill + On sidings shaven clean, + And counts his clustering + Dead daisies on a string + With witless laughter.... + + Then like a new Jill + Toiling up a hill + Life scrambles after. + + BROOKLYN BRIDGE + + Pythoness body--arching + Over the night like an ecstasy-- + I feel your coils tightening... + And the world's lessening breath. + + DREAMS + + Men die... + Dreams only change their houses. + They cannot be lined up against a wall + And quietly buried under ground, + And no more heard of... + However deep the pit and heaped the clay-- + Like seedlings of old time + Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world-- + Dreams will to light. + + THE FIRE + + The old men of the world have made a fire + To warm their trembling hands. + They poke the young men in. + The young men burn like withes. + + If one run a little way, + The old men are wrath. + They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames. + Green withes burn slow... + And the smoke of the young men's torment + Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak, + And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky.... + + Green withes burn slow... + And the old men of the world sit round the fire + And rub their hands.... + But the smoke of the young men's torment + Ascends up for ever and ever. + + A MEMORY + + I remember + The crackle of the palm trees + Over the mooned white roofs of the town... + The shining town... + And the tender fumbling of the surf + On the sulphur-yellow beaches + As we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night. + + The moon hung above us like a golden mango, + And the moist air clung to our faces, + Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child + And we watched the out-flung sea + Rolling to the purple edge of the world, + Yet ever back upon itself... + As we... + + Inadequate night... + And mooned white memory + Of a tropic sea... + How softly it comes up + Like an ungathered lily. + + THE EDGE + + I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me... + But there was time... + And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain, + staring into the abyss... + I do not know how long... + I could not count the hours, they ran so fast + Like little bare-foot urchins--shaking my hands away... + But I remember + Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein... + And a wind came out of the grass, + Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw. + + As the night grew + The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth + Fell in ashen folds about the hills, + Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them... + There must have been a spent moon, + For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver... + + That too I remember... + And the tenderly rocking mountain + Silence + And beating stars... + + Dawn + Lay like a waxen hand upon the world, + And folded hills + Broke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold, + Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily, + Flecked with sun, + Fine as a golden pollen-- + It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow. + + I smelled the raw sweet essences of things, + And heard spiders in the leaves + And ticking of little feet, + As tiny creatures came out of their doors + To see God pouring light into his star... + + ... It seemed life held + No future and no past but this... + + And I too got up stiffly from the earth, + And held my heart up like a cup... + + THE GARDEN + + Bountiful Givers, + I look along the years + And see the flowers you threw... + Anemones + And sprigs of gray + Sparse heather of the rocks, + Or a wild violet + Or daisy of a daisied field... + But each your best. + + I might have worn them on my breast + To wilt in the long day... + I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase + And watched each petal sallowing... + I might have held them so--mechanically-- + Till the wind winnowed all the leaves + And left upon my hands + A little smear of dust. + + Instead + I hid them in the soft warm loam + Of a dim shadowed place... + Deep + In a still cool grotto, + Lit only by the memories of stars + And the wide and luminous eyes + Of dead poets + That love me and that I love... + Deep... deep... + Where none may see--not even ye who gave-- + About my soul your garden beautiful. + + UNDER-SONG + + There is music in the strong + Deep-throated bush, + Whisperings of song + Heard in the leaves' hush-- + Ballads of the trees + In tongues unknown-- + A reminiscent tone + On minor keys... + + Boughs swaying to and fro + Though no winds pass... + Faint odors in the grass + Where no flowers grow, + And flutterings of wings + And faint first notes, + Once babbled on the boughs + Of faded springs. + + Is it music from the graves + Of all things fair + Trembling on the staves + Of spacious air-- + Fluted by the winds + Songs with no words-- + Sonatas from the throats + Of master birds? + + One peering through the husk + Of darkness thrown + May hear it in the dusk-- + That ancient tone, + Silvery as the light + Of long dead stars + Yet falling through the night + In trembling bars. + + A WORN ROSE + + Where to-day would a dainty buyer + Imbibe your scented juice, + Pale ruin with a heart of fire; + Drain your succulence with her lips, + Grown sapless from much use... + Make minister of her desire + A chalice cup where no bee sips-- + Where no wasp wanders in? + + Close to her white flesh housed an hour, + One held you... her spent form + Drew on yours for its wasted dower-- + What favour could she do you more? + Yet, of all who drink therein, + None know it is the warm + Odorous heart of a ravished flower + Tingles so in her mouth's red core... + + IRON WINE + + The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine, + It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies, + And purple, like the blood of elderberries. + Surely it is a strong wine--juice distilled of the fierce iron. + I am drunk of its fumes. + I feel its fiery flux + Diffusing, permeating, + Working some strange alchemy... + So that I turn aside from the goodly board, + So that I look askance upon the common cup, + And from the mouths of crucibles + Suck forth the acrid sap. + + DISPOSSESSED + + Tender and tremulous green of leaves + Turned up by the wind, + Twanging among the vines-- + Wind in the grass + Blowing a clear path + For the new-stripped soul to pass... + + The naked soul in the sunlight... + Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight + On the hill-side shimmering. + + Dance light on the wind, little soul, + Like a thistle-down floating + Over the butterflies + And the lumbering bees... + + Come away from that tree + And its shadow grey as a stone... + + Bathe in the pools of light + On the hillside shimmering-- + Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain-- + + But do not linger and look + At that bleak thing under the tree. + + THE STAR + + Last night + I watched a star fall like a great pearl into the sea, + Till my ego expanding encompassed sea and star, + Containing both as in a trembling cup. + + THE TIDINGS + (Easter 1916) + + Censored lies that mimic truth... + Censored truth as pale as fear... + My heart is like a rousing bell-- + And but the dead to hear... + + My heart is like a mother bird, + Circling ever higher, + And the nest-tree rimmed about + By a forest fire... + + My heart is like a lover foiled + By a broken stair-- + They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street, + And I am not there! + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHETTO AND OTHER POEMS *** + +***** This file should be named 4332-8.txt or 4332-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/3/4332/ + +Produced by Catherine Daly + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ghetto and Other Poems + +Author: Lola Ridge + +Posting Date: August 17, 2012 [EBook #4332] +Release Date: August, 2003 +First Posted: January 8, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHETTO AND OTHER POEMS *** + + + + +Produced by Catherine Daly + + + + + + + + + + The Ghetto + Lola Ridge + + TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE + + Will you feast with me, American People? + But what have I that shall seem good to you! + + On my board are bitter apples + And honey served on thorns, + And in my flagons fluid iron, + Hot from the crucibles. + + How should such fare entice you! + + CONTENTS + + The Ghetto + Manhattan + Broadway + Flotsam + Spring + Bowery Afternoon + Promenade + The Fog + Faces + Debris + Dedication + The Song of Iron + Frank Little at Calvary + Spires + The Legion of Iron + Fuel + A Toast + "The Everlasting Return," + Palestine + The Song + To the Others + Babel + The Fiddler + Dawn Wind + North Wind + The Destroyer + Lullaby + The Foundling + The Woman with Jewels + Submerged + Art and Life + Brooklyn Bridge + Dreams + The Fire + A Memory + The Edge + The Garden + Under-Song + A Worn Rose + Iron Wine + Dispossessed + The Star + The Tidings + +The larger part of the poem entitled "The Ghetto" appeared originally in +THE NEW REPUBLIC and some of poems were printed in THE INTERNATIONAL, +OTHERS, POETRY, etc. To the editors who first published the poems the +author makes due acknowledgment. + + + + THE GHETTO + + I + + Cool, inaccessible air + Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights, + But no breath stirs the heat + Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto + And most on Hester street... + + The heat... + Nosing in the body's overflow, + Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close, + Covering all avenues of air... + + The heat in Hester street, + Heaped like a dray + With the garbage of the world. + + Bodies dangle from the fire escapes + Or sprawl over the stoops... + Upturned faces glimmer pallidly-- + Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, + And moist faces of girls + Like dank white lilies, + And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air + as at empty teats. + + Young women pass in groups, + Converging to the forums and meeting halls, + Surging indomitable, slow + Through the gross underbrush of heat. + Their heads are uncovered to the stars, + And they call to the young men and to one another + With a free camaraderie. + Only their eyes are ancient and alone... + + The street crawls undulant, + Like a river addled + With its hot tide of flesh + That ever thickens. + Heavy surges of flesh + Break over the pavements, + Clavering like a surf-- + Flesh of this abiding + Brood of those ancient mothers who saw the dawn break over Egypt... + And turned their cakes upon the dry hot stones + And went on + Till the gold of the Egyptians fell down off their arms... + Fasting and athirst... + And yet on... + + Did they vision--with those eyes darkly clear, + That looked the sun in the face and were not blinded-- + Across the centuries + The march of their enduring flesh? + Did they hear-- + Under the molten silence + Of the desert like a stopped wheel-- + (And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand...) + The infinite procession of those feet? + + II + + I room at Sodos'--in the little green room that was Bennie's-- + With Sadie + And her old father and her mother, + Who is not so old and wears her own hair. + + Old Sodos no longer makes saddles. + He has forgotten how. + He has forgotten most things--even Bennie who stays away + and sends wine on holidays-- + And he does not like Sadie's mother + Who hides God's candles, + Nor Sadie + Whose young pagan breath puts out the light-- + That should burn always, + Like Aaron's before the Lord. + + Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, + And night by night + I see the love-gesture of his arm + In its green-greasy coat-sleeve + Circling the Book, + And the candles gleaming starkly + On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, + Like a miswritten psalm... + Night by night + I hear his lifted praise, + Like a broken whinnying + Before the Lord's shut gate. + + Sadie dresses in black. + She has black-wet hair full of cold lights + And a fine-drawn face, too white. + All day the power machines + Drone in her ears... + All day the fine dust flies + Till throats are parched and itch + And the heat--like a kept corpse-- + Fouls to the last corner. + + Then--when needles move more slowly on the cloth + And sweaty fingers slacken + And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes-- + Sped by some power within, + Sadie quivers like a rod... + A thin black piston flying, + One with her machine. + + She--who stabs the piece-work with her bitter eye + And bids the girls: "Slow down-- + You'll have him cutting us again!" + She--fiery static atom, + Held in place by the fierce pressure all about-- + Speeds up the driven wheels + And biting steel--that twice + Has nipped her to the bone. + + Nights, she reads + Those books that have most unset thought, + New-poured and malleable, + To which her thought + Leaps fusing at white heat, + Or spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall, + Or at a protest meeting on the Square, + Her lit eyes kindling the mob... + Or dances madly at a festival. + Each dawn finds her a little whiter, + Though up and keyed to the long day, + Alert, yet weary... like a bird + That all night long has beat about a light. + + The Gentile lover, that she charms and shrews, + Is one more pebble in the pack + For Sadie's mother, + Who greets him with her narrowed eyes + That hold some welcome back. + "What's to be done?" she'll say, + "When Sadie wants she takes... + Better than Bennie with his Christian woman... + A man is not so like, + If they should fight, + To call her Jew..." + + Yet when she lies in bed + And the soft babble of their talk comes to her + And the silences... + I know she never sleeps + Till the keen draught blowing up the empty hall + Edges through her transom + And she hears his foot on the first stairs. + + Sarah and Anna live on the floor above. + Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed. + Life for her has no ritual. + She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. + Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch. + If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear flame. + It is droll that she should work in a pants factory. + --Yet where else... tousled and collar awry at her olive throat. + Besides her hands are unkempt. + With English... and everything... there is so little time. + She reads without bias-- + Doubting clamorously-- + Psychology, plays, science, philosophies-- + Those giant flowers that have bloomed and withered, scattering their seed... + --And out of this young forcing soil what growth may come-- + what amazing blossomings. + + Anna is different. + One is always aware of Anna, and the young men turn their heads + to look at her. + She has the appeal of a folk-song + And her cheap clothes are always in rhythm. + When the strike was on she gave half her pay. + She would give anything--save the praise that is hers + And the love of her lyric body. + + But Sarah's desire covets nothing apart. + She would share all things... + Even her lover. + + III + + The sturdy Ghetto children + March by the parade, + Waving their toy flags, + Prancing to the bugles-- + Lusty, unafraid... + Shaking little fire sticks + At the night-- + The old blinking night-- + Swerving out of the way, + Wrapped in her darkness like a shawl. + + But a small girl + Cowers apart. + Her braided head, + Shiny as a black-bird's + In the gleam of the torch-light, + Is poised as for flight. + Her eyes have the glow + Of darkened lights. + + She stammers in Yiddish, + But I do not understand, + And there flits across her face + A shadow + As of a drawn blind. + I give her an orange, + Large and golden, + And she looks at it blankly. + I take her little cold hand and try to draw her to me, + But she is stiff... + Like a doll... + + Suddenly she darts through the crowd + Like a little white panic + Blown along the night-- + Away from the terror of oncoming feet... + And drums rattling like curses in red roaring mouths... + And torches spluttering silver fire + And lights that nose out hiding-places... + To the night-- + Squatting like a hunchback + Under the curved stoop-- + The old mammy-night + That has outlived beauty and knows the ways of fear-- + The night--wide-opening crooked and comforting arms, + Hiding her as in a voluminous skirt. + + The sturdy Ghetto children + March by the parade, + Waving their toy flags, + Prancing to the bugles, + Lusty, unafraid. + But I see a white frock + And eyes like hooded lights + Out of the shadow of pogroms + Watching... watching... + + IV + + Calicoes and furs, + Pocket-books and scarfs, + Razor strops and knives + (Patterns in check...) + + Olive hands and russet head, + Pickles red and coppery, + Green pickles, brown pickles, + (Patterns in tapestry...) + + Coral beads, blue beads, + Beads of pearl and amber, + Gewgaws, beauty pins-- + Bijoutry for chits-- + Darting rays of violet, + Amethyst and jade... + All the colors out to play, + Jumbled iridescently... + (Patterns in stained glass + Shivered into bits!) + + Nooses of gay ribbon + Tugging at one's sleeve, + Dainty little garters + Hanging out their sign... + Here a pout of frilly things-- + There a sonsy feather... + (White beards, black beards + Like knots in the weave...) + + And ah, the little babies-- + Shiny black-eyed babies-- + (Half a million pink toes + Wriggling altogether.) + Baskets full of babies + Like grapes on a vine. + + Mothers waddling in and out, + Making all things right-- + Picking up the slipped threads + In Grand street at night-- + Grand street like a great bazaar, + Crowded like a float, + Bulging like a crazy quilt + Stretched on a line. + + But nearer seen + This litter of the East + Takes on a garbled majesty. + + The herded stalls + In dissolute array... + The glitter and the jumbled finery + And strangely juxtaposed + Cans, paper, rags + And colors decomposing, + Faded like old hair, + With flashes of barbaric hues + And eyes of mystery... + Flung + Like an ancient tapestry of motley weave + Upon the open wall of this new land. + + Here, a tawny-headed girl... + Lemons in a greenish broth + And a huge earthen bowl + By a bronzed merchant + With a tall black lamb's wool cap upon his head... + He has no glance for her. + His thrifty eyes + Bend--glittering, intent + Their hoarded looks + Upon his merchandise, + As though it were some splendid cloth + Or sumptuous raiment + Stitched in gold and red... + + He seldom talks + Save of the goods he spreads-- + The meager cotton with its dismal flower-- + But with his skinny hands + That hover like two hawks + Above some luscious meat, + He fingers lovingly each calico, + As though it were a gorgeous shawl, + Or costly vesture + Wrought in silken thread, + Or strange bright carpet + Made for sandaled feet... + + Here an old grey scholar stands. + His brooding eyes-- + That hold long vistas without end + Of caravans and trees and roads, + And cities dwindling in remembrance-- + Bend mostly on his tapes and thread. + + What if they tweak his beard-- + These raw young seed of Israel + Who have no backward vision in their eyes-- + And mock him as he sways + Above the sunken arches of his feet-- + They find no peg to hang their taunts upon. + His soul is like a rock + That bears a front worn smooth + By the coarse friction of the sea, + And, unperturbed, he keeps his bitter peace. + + What if a rigid arm and stuffed blue shape, + Backed by a nickel star + Does prod him on, + Taking his proud patience for humility... + All gutters are as one + To that old race that has been thrust + From off the curbstones of the world... + And he smiles with the pale irony + Of one who holds + The wisdom of the Talmud stored away + In his mind's lavender. + + But this young trader, + Born to trade as to a caul, + Peddles the notions of the hour. + The gestures of the craft are his + And all the lore + As when to hold, withdraw, persuade, advance... + And be it gum or flags, + Or clean-all or the newest thing in tags, + Demand goes to him as the bee to flower. + And he--appraising + All who come and go + With his amazing + Slight-of-mind and glance + And nimble thought + And nature balanced like the scales at nought-- + Looks Westward where the trade-lights glow, + And sees his vision rise-- + A tape-ruled vision, + Circumscribed in stone-- + Some fifty stories to the skies. + + V + + As I sit in my little fifth-floor room-- + Bare, + Save for bed and chair, + And coppery stains + Left by seeping rains + On the low ceiling + And green plaster walls, + Where when night falls + Golden lady-bugs + Come out of their holes, + And roaches, sepia-brown, consort... + I hear bells pealing + Out of the gray church at Rutgers street, + Holding its high-flung cross above the Ghetto, + And, one floor down across the court, + The parrot screaming: + Vorwaerts... Vorwaerts... + + The parrot frowsy-white, + Everlastingly swinging + On its iron bar. + + A little old woman, + With a wig of smooth black hair + Gummed about her shrunken brows, + Comes sometimes on the fire escape. + An old stooped mother, + The left shoulder low + With that uneven droopiness that women know + Who have suckled many young... + Yet I have seen no other than the parrot there. + + I watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs + Feebly, with futile reach + And fingers without clutch. + Her thews are slack + And curved the ruined back + And flesh empurpled like old meat, + Yet each conspires + To feed those guttering fires + With which her eyes are quick. + + On Friday nights + Her candles signal + Infinite fine rays + To other windows, + Coupling other lights, + Linking the tenements + Like an endless prayer. + + She seems less lonely than the bird + That day by day about the dismal house + Screams out his frenzied word... + That night by night-- + If a dog yelps + Or a cat yawls + Or a sick child whines, + Or a door screaks on its hinges, + Or a man and woman fight-- + Sends his cry above the huddled roofs: + Vorwaerts... Vorwaerts... + + VI + + In this dingy cafe + The old men sit muffled in woollens. + Everything is faded, shabby, colorless, old... + The chairs, loose-jointed, + Creaking like old bones-- + The tables, the waiters, the walls, + Whose mottled plaster + Blends in one tone with the old flesh. + + Young life and young thought are alike barred, + And no unheralded noises jolt old nerves, + And old wheezy breaths + Pass around old thoughts, dry as snuff, + And there is no divergence and no friction + Because life is flattened and ground as by many mills. + + And it is here the Committee-- + Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin + And supple of spine and knee, + With shining unpouched eyes + And the blood, high-powered, + Leaping in flexible arteries-- + The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee, + Who would placard tombstones + And scatter leaflets even in graves, + Comes trampling with sacrilegious feet! + + The old men turn stiffly, + Mumbling to each other. + They are gentle and torpid and busy with eating. + But one lifts a face of clayish pallor, + There is a dull fury in his eyes, like little rusty grates. + He rises slowly, + Trembling in his many swathings like an awakened mummy, + Ridiculous yet terrible. + --And the Committee flings him a waste glance, + Dropping a leaflet by his plate. + + A lone fire flickers in the dusty eyes. + The lips chant inaudibly. + The warped shrunken body straightens like a tree. + And he curses... + With uplifted arms and perished fingers, + Claw-like, clutching... + So centuries ago + The old men cursed Acosta, + When they, prophetic, heard upon their sepulchres + Those feet that may not halt nor turn aside for ancient things. + + VII + + Here in this room, bare like a barn, + Egos gesture one to the other-- + Naked, unformed, unwinged + Egos out of the shell, + Examining, searching, devouring-- + Avid alike for the flower or the dung... + (Having no dainty antennae for the touch and withdrawal-- + Only the open maw...) + + Egos cawing, + Expanding in the mean egg... + Little squat tailors with unkempt faces, + Pale as lard, + Fur-makers, factory-hands, shop-workers, + News-boys with battling eyes + And bodies yet vibrant with the momentum of long runs, + Here and there a woman... + + Words, words, words, + Pattering like hail, + Like hail falling without aim... + Egos rampant, + Screaming each other down. + One motions perpetually, + Waving arms like overgrowths. + He has burning eyes and a cough + And a thin voice piping + Like a flute among trombones. + + One, red-bearded, rearing + A welter of maimed face bashed in from some old wound, + Garbles Max Stirner. + His words knock each other like little wooden blocks. + No one heeds him, + And a lank boy with hair over his eyes + Pounds upon the table. + --He is chairman. + + Egos yet in the primer, + Hearing world-voices + Chanting grand arias... + Majors resonant, + Stunning with sound... + Baffling minors + Half-heard like rain on pools... + Majestic discordances + Greater than harmonies... + --Gleaning out of it all + Passion, bewilderment, pain... + + Egos yearning with the world-old want in their eyes-- + Hurt hot eyes that do not sleep enough... + Striving with infinite effort, + Frustrate yet ever pursuing + The great white Liberty, + Trailing her dissolving glory over each hard-won barricade-- + Only to fade anew... + + Egos crying out of unkempt deeps + And waving their dreams like flags-- + Multi-colored dreams, + Winged and glorious... + + A gas jet throws a stunted flame, + Vaguely illumining the groping faces. + And through the uncurtained window + Falls the waste light of stars, + As cold as wise men's eyes... + Indifferent great stars, + Fortuitously glancing + At the secret meeting in this shut-in room, + Bare as a manger. + + VIII + + Lights go out + And the stark trunks of the factories + Melt into the drawn darkness, + Sheathing like a seamless garment. + + And mothers take home their babies, + Waxen and delicately curled, + Like little potted flowers closed under the stars. + + Lights go out + And the young men shut their eyes, + But life turns in them... + + Life in the cramped ova + Tearing and rending asunder its living cells... + Wars, arts, discoveries, rebellions, travails, immolations, + cataclysms, hates... + Pent in the shut flesh. + And the young men twist on their beds in languor and dizziness + unsupportable... + Their eyes--heavy and dimmed + With dust of long oblivions in the gray pulp behind-- + Staring as through a choked glass. + And they gaze at the moon--throwing off a faint heat-- + The moon, blond and burning, creeping to their cots + Softly, as on naked feet... + Lolling on the coverlet... like a woman offering her white body. + + Nude glory of the moon! + That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped + of their linens; + Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl + Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them. + They shudder and grow faint. + And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody, + That Life, like a drunken player, + Strikes out of their clear white bodies + As out of ivory keys. + + Lights go out... + And the great lovers linger in little groups, still passionately debating, + Or one may walk in silence, listening only to the still summons of Life-- + Life making the great Demand... + Calling its new Christs... + Till tears come, blurring the stars + That grow tender and comforting like the eyes of comrades; + And the moon rolls behind the Battery + Like a word molten out of the mouth of God. + + Lights go out... + And colors rush together, + Fusing and floating away... + Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels... + Mauves, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples + And burning spires in aureoles of light + Like shimmering auras. + + They are covering up the pushcarts... + Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors-- + Little oval mirrors like tiny pools. + He shuffles up a darkened street + And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus... + The moon like a skull, + Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts. + + IX + + A sallow dawn is in the sky + As I enter my little green room. + Sadie's light is still burning... + Without, the frail moon + Worn to a silvery tissue, + Throws a faint glamour on the roofs, + And down the shadowy spires + Lights tip-toe out... + Softly as when lovers close street doors. + + Out of the Battery + A little wind + Stirs idly--as an arm + Trails over a boat's side in dalliance-- + Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat, + And Hester street, + Like a forlorn woman over-born + By many babies at her teats, + Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day. + + LIFE! + Startling, vigorous life, + That squirms under my touch, + And baffles me when I try to examine it, + Or hurls me back without apology. + Leaving my ego ruffled and preening itself. + + Life, + Articulate, shrill, + Screaming in provocative assertion, + Or out of the black and clotted gutters, + Piping in silvery thin + Sweet staccato + Of children's laughter, + + Or clinging over the pushcarts + Like a litter of tiny bells + Or the jingle of silver coins, + Perpetually changing hands, + Or like the Jordan somberly + Swirling in tumultuous uncharted tides, + Surface-calm. + + Electric currents of life, + Throwing off thoughts like sparks, + Glittering, disappearing, + Making unknown circuits, + Or out of spent particles stirring + Feeble contortions in old faiths + Passing before the new. + + Long nights argued away + In meeting halls + Back of interminable stairways-- + In Roumanian wine-shops + And little Russian tea-rooms... + + Feet echoing through deserted streets + In the soft darkness before dawn... + Brows aching, throbbing, burning-- + Life leaping in the shaken flesh + Like flame at an asbestos curtain. + + Life-- + Pent, overflowing + Stoops and facades, + Jostling, pushing, contriving, + Seething as in a great vat... + + Bartering, changing, extorting, + Dreaming, debating, aspiring, + Astounding, indestructible + Life of the Ghetto... + + Strong flux of life, + Like a bitter wine + Out of the bloody stills of the world... + Out of the Passion eternal. + + + MANHATTAN LIGHTS + + MANHATTAN + + Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, + In a vesture of gold-- + Span of innumerable arcs, + Flaring and multiplying-- + Gold at the uttermost circles fading + Into the tenderest hint of jade, + Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, + Robing the far-flung offices, + Scintillant-storied, forking flame, + Or soaring to luminous amethyst + Over the steeples aureoled-- + + Diaphanous gold, + Veiling the Woolworth, argently + Rising slender and stark + Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry, + And towers squatting graven and cold + On the velvet bales of the dark, + And the Singer's appraising + Indolent idol's eye, + And night like a purple cloth unrolled-- + + Nebulous gold + Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, + Wherein you burn... + You of unknown voltage + Whirling on your axis... + Scrawling vermillion signatures + Over the night's velvet hoarding... + Insolent, towering spherical + To apices ever shifting. + + BROADWAY + + Light! + Innumerable ions of light, + Kindling, irradiating, + All to their foci tending... + + Light that jingles like anklet chains + On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet, + Or clingles in myriad vibrations + Like trillions of porcelain + Vases shattering... + + Light over the laminae of roofs, + Diffusing in shimmering nebulae + About the night's boundaries, + Or billowing in pearly foam + Submerging the low-lying stars... + + Light for the feast prolonged-- + Captive light in the goblets quivering... + Sparks evanescent + Struck of meeting looks-- + Fringed eyelids leashing + Sheathed and leaping lights... + Infinite bubbles of light + Bursting, reforming... + Silvery filings of light + Incessantly falling... + Scintillant, sided dust of light + Out of the white flares of Broadway-- + Like a great spurious diamond + In the night's corsage faceted... + + Broadway, + In ambuscades of light, + Drawing the charmed multitudes + With the slow suction of her breath-- + Dangling her naked soul + Behind the blinding gold of eunuch lights + That wind about her like a bodyguard. + + Or like a huge serpent, iridescent-scaled, + Trailing her coruscating length + Over the night prostrate-- + Triumphant poised, + Her hydra heads above the avenues, + Values appraising + And her avid eyes + Glistening with eternal watchfulness... + + Broadway-- + Out of her towers rampant, + Like an unsubtle courtezan + Reserving nought for some adventurous night. + + FLOTSAM + + Crass rays streaming from the vestibules; + Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth; + High-flung signs + Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes; + Girls in black + Circling monotonously + About the orange lights... + + Nothing to guess at... + Save the darkness above + Crouching like a great cat. + + In the dim-lit square, + Where dishevelled trees + Tustle with the wind--the wind like a scythe + Mowing their last leaves-- + Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze-- + Pale oval arcs + Like ailing virgins, + Each out of a halo circumscribed, + Pallidly staring... + + Figures drift upon the benches + With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling-- + Slovenly figures like untied parcels, + And papers wrapped about their knees + Huddled one to the other, + Cringing to the wind-- + The sided wind, + Leaving no breach untried... + + So many and all so still... + The fountain slobbering its stone basin + Is louder than They-- + Flotsam of the five oceans + Here on this raft of the world. + + This old man's head + Has found a woman's shoulder. + The wind juggles with her shawl + That flaps about them like a sail, + And splashes her red faded hair + Over the salt stubble of his chin. + A light foam is on his lips, + As though dreams surged in him + Breaking and ebbing away... + And the bare boughs shuffle above him + And the twigs rattle like dice... + + She--diffused like a broken beetle-- + Sprawls without grace, + Her face gray as asphalt, + Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges... + Shadows ply about her mouth-- + Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree, + That dances above her its dance of dry bones. + + II + + A uniformed front, + Paunched; + A glance like a blow, + The swing of an arm, + Verved, vigorous; + Boot-heels clanking + In metallic rhythm; + The blows of a baton, + Quick, staccato... + + --There is a rustling along the benches + As of dried leaves raked over... + And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand, + Tucking the displaced paper about his knees. + + Colder... + And a frost under foot, + Acid, corroding, + Eating through worn bootsoles. + + Drab forms blur into greenish vapor. + Through boughs like cross-bones, + Pale arcs flare and shiver + Like lilies in a wind. + + High over Broadway + A far-flung sign + Glitters in indigo darkness + And spurts again rhythmically, + Spraying great drops + Red as a hemorrhage. + + SPRING + + A spring wind on the Bowery, + Blowing the fluff of night shelters + Off bedraggled garments, + And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor + Like lewd growths. + + Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other, + One--with a choir-boy's face + Twits me as I pass... + The word, like a muddied drop, + Seems to roll over and not out of + The bowed lips, + Yet dewy red + And sweetly immature. + + People sniff the air with an upward look-- + Even the mite of a girl + Who never plays... + Her mother smiles at her + With eyes like vacant lots + Rimming vistas of mean streets + And endless washing days... + Yet with sun on the lines + And a drying breeze. + + The old candy woman + Shivers in the young wind. + Her eyes--littered with memories + Like ancient garrets, + Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died-- + Ask nothing of the spring. + + But a pale pink dream + Trembles about this young girl's body, + Draping it like a glowing aura. + + She gloats in a mirror + Over her gaudy hat, + With its flower God never thought of... + + And the dream, unrestrained, + Floats about the loins of a soldier, + Where it quivers a moment, + Warming to a crimson + Like the scarf of a toreador... + + But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact + And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose. + + BOWERY AFTERNOON + + Drab discoloration + Of faces, facades, pawn-shops, + Second-hand clothing, + Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms, + Odors of rancid life... + + Deadly uniformity + Of eyes and windows + Alike devoid of light... + Holes wherein life scratches-- + Mangy life + Nosing to the gutter's end... + + Show-rooms and mimic pillars + Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules + Bosoms and posturing thighs... + + Over all the Elevated + Droning like a bloated fly. + + PROMENADE + + Undulant rustlings, + Of oncoming silk, + Rhythmic, incessant, + Like the motion of leaves... + Fragments of color + In glowing surprises... + Pink inuendoes + Hooded in gray + Like buds in a cobweb + Pearled at dawn... + Glimpses of green + And blurs of gold + And delicate mauves + That snatch at youth... + And bodies all rosily + Fleshed for the airing, + In warm velvety surges + Passing imperious, slow... + + Women drift into the limousines + That shut like silken caskets + On gems half weary of their glittering... + Lamps open like pale moon flowers... + Arcs are radiant opals + Strewn along the dusk... + No common lights invade. + And spires rise like litanies-- + Magnificats of stone + Over the white silence of the arcs, + Burning in perpetual adoration. + + THE FOG + + Out of the lamp-bestarred and clouded dusk-- + Snaring, illuding, concealing, + Magically conjuring-- + Turning to fairy-coaches + Beetle-backed limousines + Scampering under the great Arch-- + Making a decoy of blue overalls + And mystery of a scarlet shawl-- + Indolently-- + Knowing no impediment of its sure advance-- + Descends the fog. + + FACES + + A late snow beats + With cold white fists upon the tenements-- + Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters, + Like tall old slatterns + Pulling aprons about their heads. + + Lights slanting out of Mott Street + Gibber out, + Or dribble through bar-room slits, + Anonymous shapes + Conniving behind shuttered panes + Caper and disappear... + Where the Bowery + Is throbbing like a fistula + Back of her ice-scabbed fronts. + + Livid faces + Glimmer in furtive doorways, + Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys, + Smears of faces like muddied beads, + Making a ghastly rosary + The night mumbles over + And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper... + Patrolling arcs + Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line + Stalk them as they pass, + Silent as though accouched of the darkness, + And the wind noses among them, + Like a skunk + That roots about the heart... + + Colder: + And the Elevated slams upon the silence + Like a ponderous door. + Then all is still again, + Save for the wind fumbling over + The emptily swaying faces-- + The wind rummaging + Like an old Jew... + + Faces in glimmering rows... + (No sign of the abject life-- + Not even a blasphemy...) + But the spindle legs keep time + To a limping rhythm, + And the shadows twitch upon the snow + Convulsively-- + As though death played + With some ungainly dolls. + + + LABOR + + DEBRIS + + I love those spirits + That men stand off and point at, + Or shudder and hood up their souls-- + Those ruined ones, + Where Liberty has lodged an hour + And passed like flame, + Bursting asunder the too small house. + + DEDICATION + + I would be a torch unto your hand, + A lamp upon your forehead, Labor, + In the wild darkness before the Dawn + That I shall never see... + + We shall advance together, my Beloved, + Awaiting the mighty ushering... + Together we shall make the last grand charge + And ride with gorgeous Death + With all her spangles on + And cymbals clashing... + And you shall rush on exultant as I fall-- + Scattering a brief fire about your feet... + + Let it be so... + Better--while life is quick + And every pain immense and joy supreme, + And all I have and am + Flames upward to the dream... + Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn, + Burning out the wick. + + THE SONG OF IRON + + I + + Not yet hast Thou sounded + Thy clangorous music, + Whose strings are under the mountains... + Not yet hast Thou spoken + The blooded, implacable Word... + + But I hear in the Iron singing-- + In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding-- + Thy barbaric exhortation... + And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved, + Answering Thy call... + All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice, + And sings exultant with the Iron, + For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen... + + Oh fashioned in fire-- + Needing flame for Thy ultimate word-- + Behold me, a cupola + Poured to Thy use! + + Heed not my tremulous body + That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet. + Break it... and cast it aside... + But make of my spirit + That dares and endures + Thy crucible... + Pour through my soul + Thy molten, world-whelming song. + + ... Here at Thy uttermost gate + Like a new Mary, I wait... + + II + + Charge the blast furnace, workman... + Open the valves-- + Drive the fires high... + (Night is above the gates). + + How golden-hot the ore is + From the cupola spurting, + Tossing the flaming petals + Over the silt and furnace ash-- + Blown leaves, devastating, + Falling about the world... + + Out of the furnace mouth-- + Out of the giant mouth-- + The raging, turgid, mouth-- + Fall fiery blossoms + Gold with the gold of buttercups + In a field at sunset, + Or huskier gold of dandelions, + Warmed in sun-leavings, + Or changing to the paler hue + At the creamy hearts of primroses. + + Charge the converter, workman-- + Tired from the long night? + But the earth shall suck up darkness-- + The earth that holds so much... + And out of these molten flowers, + Shall shape the heavy fruit... + + Then open the valves-- + Drive the fires high, + Your blossoms nurturing. + (Day is at the gates + And a young wind...) + + Put by your rod, comrade, + And look with me, shading your eyes... + Do you not see-- + Through the lucent haze + Out of the converter rising-- + In the spirals of fire + Smiting and blinding, + A shadowy shape + White as a flame of sacrifice, + Like a lily swaying? + + III + + The ore leaping in the crucibles, + The ore communicant, + Sending faint thrills along the leads... + Fire is running along the roots of the mountains... + I feel the long recoil of earth + As under a mighty quickening... + (Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron...) + All palpitant, I wait... + + + IV + + Here ye, Dictators--late Lords of the Iron, + Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered-- + The blooded, implacable Word? + Not whispered in cloture, one to the other, + (Brother in fear of the fear of his brother...) + But chanted and thundered + On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron + Babbling in flame... + + Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled, + Manacles riven and ramparts defaced... + (Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling...) + Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced... + + Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning... + Clangor of iron smashing on iron, + Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying + Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder... + + Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring, + Battering egress through ramparted walls... + Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power, + Into the holocaust snorting and plunging... + + Mighty converters torn from their axis, + Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire, + Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen... + Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron... + + Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying... + Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending... + Shock of leviathans prone on each other... + Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore... + Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying + In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron, + Tasting the turbulent fury of living, + Mad with a moment's exuberant living! + Crash of devastating hammers despoiling.. + Hands inexorable, marring + What hands had so cunningly moulded... + + Structures of steel welded, subtily tempered, + Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore, + Torn into octaves discordantly clashing, + Chords never final but onward progressing + In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound + in mad vortices whirling... + + Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation + Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling... + The fierce obligato the steel pipes are screaming... + The blare of the rude molten music of Iron... + + FRANK LITTLE AT CALVARY + + I + + He walked under the shadow of the Hill + Where men are fed into the fires + And walled apart... + Unarmed and alone, + He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth + Where tools rested on the floors + And great cranes swung + Unemptied, on the iron girders. + And they, who were the Lords of the Hill, + Were seized with a great fear, + When they heard out of the silence of wheels + The answer ringing + In endless reverberations + Under the mountain... + + So they covered up their faces + And crept upon him as he slept... + Out of eye-holes in black cloth + They looked upon him who had flung + Between them and their ancient prey + The frail barricade of his life... + And when night--that has connived at so much-- + Was heavy with the unborn day, + They haled him from his bed... + + Who might know of that wild ride? + Only the bleak Hill-- + The red Hill, vigilant, + Like a blood-shot eye + In the black mask of night-- + Dared watch them as they raced + By each blind-folded street + Godiva might have ridden down... + But when they stopped beside the Place, + I know he turned his face + Wistfully to the accessory night... + + And when he saw--against the sky, + Sagged like a silken net + Under its load of stars-- + The black bridge poised + Like a gigantic spider motionless... + I know there was a silence in his heart, + As of a frozen sea, + Where some half lifted arm, mid-way + Wavers, and drops heavily... + + I know he waved to life, + And that life signaled back, transcending space, + To each high-powered sense, + So that he missed no gesture of the wind + Drawing the shut leaves close... + So that he saw the light on comrades' faces + Of camp fires out of sight... + And the savor of meat and bread + Blew in his nostrils... and the breath + Of unrailed spaces + Where shut wild clover smelled as sweet + As a virgin in her bed. + + I know he looked once at America, + Quiescent, with her great flanks on the globe, + And once at the skies whirling above him... + Then all that he had spoken against + And struck against and thrust against + Over the frail barricade of his life + Rushed between him and the stars... + + II + + Life thunders on... + Over the black bridge + The line of lighted cars + Creeps like a monstrous serpent + Spooring gold... + + Watchman, what of the track? + + Night... silence... stars... + All's Well! + + III + + Light... + (Breaking mists... + Hills gliding like hands out of a slipping hold...) + Light over the pit mouths, + Streaming in tenuous rays down the black gullets of the Hill... + (The copper, insensate, sleeping in the buried lode.) + Light... + Forcing the clogged windows of arsenals... + Probing with long sentient fingers in the copper chips... + Gleaming metallic and cold + In numberless slivers of steel... + Light over the trestles and the iron clips + Of the black bridge--poised like a gigantic spider motionless-- + Sweet inquisition of light, like a child's wonder... + Intrusive, innocently staring light + That nothing appals... + + Light in the slow fumbling summer leaves, + Cooing and calling + All winged and avid things + Waking the early flies, keen to the scent... + Green-jeweled iridescent flies + Unerringly steering-- + Swarming over the blackened lips, + The young day sprays with indiscriminate gold... + + Watchman, what of the Hill? + + Wheels turn; + The laden cars + Go rumbling to the mill, + And Labor walks beside the mules... + All's Well with the Hill! + + SPIRES + + Spires of Grace Church, + For you the workers of the world + Travailed with the mountains... + Aborting their own dreams + Till the dream of you arose-- + Beautiful, swaddled in stone-- + Scorning their hands. + + THE LEGION OF IRON + + They pass through the great iron gates-- + Men with eyes gravely discerning, + Skilled to appraise the tunnage of cranes + Or split an inch into thousandths-- + Men tempered by fire as the ore is + And planned to resistance + Like steel that has cooled in the trough; + Silent of purpose, inflexible, set to fulfilment-- + To conquer, withstand, overthrow... + Men mannered to large undertakings, + Knowing force as a brother + And power as something to play with, + Seeing blood as a slip of the iron, + To be wiped from the tools + Lest they rust. + + But what if they stood aside, + Who hold the earth so careless in the crook of their arms? + + What of the flamboyant cities + And the lights guttering out like candles in a wind... + And the armies halted... + And the train mid-way on the mountain + And idle men chaffing across the trenches... + And the cursing and lamentation + And the clamor for grain shut in the mills of the world? + What if they stayed apart, + Inscrutably smiling, + Leaving the ground encumbered with dead wire + And the sea to row-boats + And the lands marooned-- + Till Time should like a paralytic sit, + A mildewed hulk above the nations squatting? + + FUEL + + What of the silence of the keys + And silvery hands? The iron sings... + Though bows lie broken on the strings, + The fly-wheels turn eternally... + + Bring fuel--drive the fires high... + Throw all this artist-lumber in + And foolish dreams of making things... + (Ten million men are called to die.) + + As for the common men apart, + Who sweat to keep their common breath, + And have no hour for books or art-- + What dreams have these to hide from death! + + A TOAST + + Not your martyrs anointed of heaven-- + The ages are red where they trod-- + But the Hunted--the world's bitter leaven-- + Who smote at your imbecile God-- + + A being to pander and fawn to, + To propitiate, flatter and dread + As a thing that your souls are in pawn to, + A Dealer who traffics the dead; + + A Trader with greed never sated, + Who barters the souls in his snares, + That were trapped in the lusts he created, + For incense and masses and prayers-- + + They are crushed in the coils of your halters; + 'Twere well--by the creeds ye have nursed-- + That ye send up a cry from your altars, + A mass for the Martyrs Accursed; + + A passionate prayer from reprieval + For the Brotherhood not understood-- + For the Heroes who died for the evil, + Believing the evil was good. + + To the Breakers, the Bold, the Despoilers, + Who dreamed of a world over-thrown... + They who died for the millions of toilers-- + Few--fronting the nations alone! + + --To the Outlawed of men and the Branded, + Whether hated or hating they fell-- + I pledge the devoted, red-handed, + Unfaltering Heroes of Hell! + + + ACCIDENTALS + + "THE EVERLASTING RETURN" + + It is dark... so dark, I remember the sun on Chios... + It is still... so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean... + + Ten times we had watched the moon + Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters + And round into a full maternity... + For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh + Save the man flesh on either hand + That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea. + + The Athenian boy sat on my left... + His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine... + And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian, + Grinning Phildar + With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth. + Many a whip had coiled about him + And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels, + And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun. + He did not sing like the other slaves, + But when a big wind came up he screamed with it. + And always he looked out to sea, + Save when he tore at his fish ends + Or spat across me at the Greek boy, whose mouth was red and apart + like an opened fruit. + + We had rowed from dawn and the green galley hard at our stern. + She was green and squat and skulked close to the sea. + All day the tish of their paddles had tickled our ears, + And when night came on + And little naked stars dabbled in the water + And half the crouching moon + Slid over the silver belly of the sea thick-scaled with light, + We heard them singing at their oars... + We who had no breath for song. + + There was no sound in our boat + Save the clingle of wrist chains + And the sobbing of the young Greek. + I cursed him that his hair blew in my mouth, tasting salt of the sea... + I cursed him that his oar kept ill time... + When he looked at me I cursed him again, + That his eyes were soft as a woman's. + + How long... since their last shell gouged our batteries? + How long... since we rose at aim with a sleuth moon astern? + (It was the damned green moon that nosed us out... + The moon that flushed our periscope till it shone like a silver flame...) + + They loosed each man's right hand + As the galley spent on our decks... + And amazed and bloodied we reared half up + And fought askew with the left hand shackled... + But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets + And knotted our thews like string... + Our thews grown stiff as a crooked spine that would not straighten... + + How long... since our gauges fell + And the sea shoved us under? + It is dark... so dark... + Darkness presses hairy-hot + Where three make crowded company... + And the rank steel smells.... + It is still... so still... + I seem to hear the wind + On the dimpled face of the water fathoms above... + + + It was still... so still... we three that were left alive + Stared in each other's faces... + But three make bitter company at one man's bread... + And our hate grew sharp and bright as the moon's edge in the water. + + One grinned with his mouth awry from the long gapped teeth... + And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over... + But one struck with his hate in his hand... + + After that I remember + Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea... + The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues. + + It is still... so still, with the jargon of engines quiet. + We three awaiting the crunch of the sea + Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces... + We three sheathing hate in our hearts... + But when hate shall have made its circuit, + Our bones will be loving company + Here in the sea's den... + And one whimpers and cries on his God + And one sits sullenly + But both draw away from me... + For I am the pyre their memories burn on... + Like black flames leaping + Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea... + The sea that kneels above us... + And makes no sign. + + PALESTINE + + Old plant of Asia-- + Mutilated vine + Holding earth's leaping sap + In every stem and shoot + That lopped off, sprouts again-- + Why should you seek a plateau walled about, + Whose garden is the world? + + THE SONG + + That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks + on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron, + And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine + floating like cotton-down, + And the harsh and terrible screaming, + And that strange vibration at the roots of us... + Desire, fierce, like a song... + And we heard + (Do you remember?) + All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue + And bugles in little home towns + And children's harmonicas bleating + + America! + + And after... + (Do you remember?) + The drollery of the wind on our faces, + And horizons reeling, + And the terror of the plain + Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun... + Under us--threshing and twanging + Torn-up roots of the Song... + + TO THE OTHERS + + I see you, refulgent ones, + Burning so steadily + Like big white arc lights... + There are so many of you. + I like to watch you weaving-- + Altogether and with precision + Each his ray-- + Your tracery of light, + Making a shining way about America. + + I note your infinite reactions-- + In glassware + And sequin + And puddles + And bits of jet-- + And here and there a diamond... + + But you do not yet see me, + Who am a torch blown along the wind, + Flickering to a spark + But never out. + + BABEL + + Oh, God did cunningly, there at Babel-- + Not mere tongues dividing, but soul from soul, + So that never again should men be able + To fashion one infinite, towering whole. + + THE FIDDLER + + In a little Hungarian cafe + Men and women are drinking + Yellow wine in tall goblets. + + Through the milky haze of the smoke, + The fiddler, under-sized, blond, + Leans to his violin + As to the breast of a woman. + Red hair kindles to fire + On the black of his coat-sleeve, + Where his white thin hand + Trembles and dives, + Like a sliver of moonlight, + When wind has broken the water. + + DAWN WIND + + Wind, just arisen-- + (Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss + In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars, + Or niche of cliff under the eagles?) + You of living things, + So gay and tender and full of play-- + Why do you blow on my thoughts--like cut flowers + Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood? + + I see you + Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation + And frisking away, + Deliciously rumpling the grass... + + So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle, + Prattling of fields + Before I had had my milk... + Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One? + I--swaddled, unwinged, like a bird in the egg. + + Let be + My dreams that crackle under your breath... + You have the dust of the world to blow on... + Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... + I am too old to play with you, + Eternal Child. + + NORTH WIND + + I love you, malcontent + Male wind-- + Shaking the pollen from a flower + Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand. + + Blow on and over my dreams... + Scatter my sick dreams... + Throw your lusty arms about me... + Envelop all my hot body... + Carry me to pine forests-- + Great, rough-bearded forests... + Bring me to stark plains and steppes... + I would have the North to-night-- + The cold, enduring North. + + And if we should meet the Snow, + Whirling in spirals, + And he should blind my eyes... + Ally, you will defend me-- + You will hold me close, + Blowing on my eyelids. + + THE DESTROYER + + I am of the wind... + A wisp of the battering wind... + + I trail my fingers along the Alps + And an avalanche falls in my wake... + I feel in my quivering length + When it buries the hamlet beneath... + + I hurriedly sweep aside + The cities that clutter our path... + As we whirl about the circle of the globe... + As we tear at the pillars of the world... + Open to the wind, + The Destroyer! + The wind that is battering at your gates. + + LULLABY + + Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown... + (There's a shout at the door an' a big red light...) + Lil' coon baby, mammy is down... + Han's that hold yuh are steady an' white... + + Look piccaninny--such a gran' blaze + Lickin' up the roof an' the sticks of home-- + Ever see the like in all yo' days! + --Cain't yuh sleep, mah bit-of-honey-comb? + + Rock-a-by baby, up to the sky! + Look at the cherries driftin' by-- + Bright red cherries spilled on the groun'-- + Piping-hot cherries at nuthin' a poun'! + + Hush, mah lil' black-bug--doan yuh weep. + Daddy's run away an' mammy's in a heap + By her own fron' door in the blazin' heat + Outah the shacks like warts on the street... + + An' the singin' flame an' the gleeful crowd + Circlin' aroun'... won't mammy be proud! + With a stone at her hade an' a stone on her heart, + An' her mouth like a red plum, broken apart... + + See where the blue an' khaki prance, + Adding brave colors to the dance + About the big bonfire white folks make-- + Such gran' doin's fo' a lil' coon's sake! + + Hear all the eagah feet runnin' in town-- + See all the willin' han's reach outah night-- + Han's that are wonderful, steady an' white! + To toss up a lil' babe, blinkin' an' brown... + + Rock-a-by baby--higher an' higher! + Mammy is sleepin' an' daddy's run lame... + (Soun' may yuh sleep in yo' cradle o' fire!) + Rock-a-by baby, hushed in the flame... + +(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women +flung a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.) + + THE FOUNDLING + + Snow wraiths circle us + Like washers of the dead, + Flapping their white wet cloths + Impatiently + About the grizzled head, + Where the coarse hair mats like grass, + And the efficient wind + With cold professional baste + Probes like a lancet + Through the cotton shirt... + + About us are white cliffs and space. + No facades show, + Nor roof nor any spire... + All sheathed in snow... + The parasitic snow + That clings about them like a blight. + + Only detached lights + Float hazily like greenish moons, + And endlessly + Down the whore-street, + Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm, + The blizzard waltzes with the night. + + THE WOMAN WITH JEWELS + + The woman with jewels sits in the cafe, + Spraying light like a fountain. + Diamonds glitter on her bulbous fingers + And on her arms, great as thighs, + Diamonds gush from her ear-lobes over the goitrous throat. + She is obesely beautiful. + Her eyes are full of bleared lights, + Like little pools of tar, spilled by a sailor in mad haste for shore... + And her mouth is scarlet and full--only a little crumpled-- + like a flower that has been pressed apart... + + Why does she come alone to this obscure basement-- + She who should have a litter and hand-maidens to support her + on either side? + + She ascends the stairway, and the waiters turn to look at her, + spilling the soup. + The black satin dress is a little lifted, showing the dropsical legs + in their silken fleshings... + The mountainous breasts tremble... + There is an agitation in her gems, + That quiver incessantly, emitting trillions of fiery rays... + She erupts explosive breaths... + Every step is an adventure + From this... + The serpent's tooth + Saved Cleopatra. + + SUBMERGED + + I have known only my own shallows-- + Safe, plumbed places, + Where I was wont to preen myself. + + But for the abyss + I wanted a plank beneath + And horizons... + + I was afraid of the silence + And the slipping toe-hold... + + Oh, could I now dive + Into the unexplored deeps of me-- + Delve and bring up and give + All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, + That is yet the best. + + ART AND LIFE + + When Art goes bounding, lean, + Up hill-tops fired green + To pluck a rose for life. + + Life like a broody hen + Cluck-clucks him back again. + + But when Art, imbecile, + Sits old and chill + On sidings shaven clean, + And counts his clustering + Dead daisies on a string + With witless laughter.... + + Then like a new Jill + Toiling up a hill + Life scrambles after. + + BROOKLYN BRIDGE + + Pythoness body--arching + Over the night like an ecstasy-- + I feel your coils tightening... + And the world's lessening breath. + + DREAMS + + Men die... + Dreams only change their houses. + They cannot be lined up against a wall + And quietly buried under ground, + And no more heard of... + However deep the pit and heaped the clay-- + Like seedlings of old time + Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world-- + Dreams will to light. + + THE FIRE + + The old men of the world have made a fire + To warm their trembling hands. + They poke the young men in. + The young men burn like withes. + + If one run a little way, + The old men are wrath. + They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames. + Green withes burn slow... + And the smoke of the young men's torment + Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak, + And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky.... + + Green withes burn slow... + And the old men of the world sit round the fire + And rub their hands.... + But the smoke of the young men's torment + Ascends up for ever and ever. + + A MEMORY + + I remember + The crackle of the palm trees + Over the mooned white roofs of the town... + The shining town... + And the tender fumbling of the surf + On the sulphur-yellow beaches + As we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night. + + The moon hung above us like a golden mango, + And the moist air clung to our faces, + Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child + And we watched the out-flung sea + Rolling to the purple edge of the world, + Yet ever back upon itself... + As we... + + Inadequate night... + And mooned white memory + Of a tropic sea... + How softly it comes up + Like an ungathered lily. + + THE EDGE + + I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me... + But there was time... + And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain, + staring into the abyss... + I do not know how long... + I could not count the hours, they ran so fast + Like little bare-foot urchins--shaking my hands away... + But I remember + Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein... + And a wind came out of the grass, + Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw. + + As the night grew + The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth + Fell in ashen folds about the hills, + Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them... + There must have been a spent moon, + For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver... + + That too I remember... + And the tenderly rocking mountain + Silence + And beating stars... + + Dawn + Lay like a waxen hand upon the world, + And folded hills + Broke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold, + Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily, + Flecked with sun, + Fine as a golden pollen-- + It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow. + + I smelled the raw sweet essences of things, + And heard spiders in the leaves + And ticking of little feet, + As tiny creatures came out of their doors + To see God pouring light into his star... + + ... It seemed life held + No future and no past but this... + + And I too got up stiffly from the earth, + And held my heart up like a cup... + + THE GARDEN + + Bountiful Givers, + I look along the years + And see the flowers you threw... + Anemones + And sprigs of gray + Sparse heather of the rocks, + Or a wild violet + Or daisy of a daisied field... + But each your best. + + I might have worn them on my breast + To wilt in the long day... + I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase + And watched each petal sallowing... + I might have held them so--mechanically-- + Till the wind winnowed all the leaves + And left upon my hands + A little smear of dust. + + Instead + I hid them in the soft warm loam + Of a dim shadowed place... + Deep + In a still cool grotto, + Lit only by the memories of stars + And the wide and luminous eyes + Of dead poets + That love me and that I love... + Deep... deep... + Where none may see--not even ye who gave-- + About my soul your garden beautiful. + + UNDER-SONG + + There is music in the strong + Deep-throated bush, + Whisperings of song + Heard in the leaves' hush-- + Ballads of the trees + In tongues unknown-- + A reminiscent tone + On minor keys... + + Boughs swaying to and fro + Though no winds pass... + Faint odors in the grass + Where no flowers grow, + And flutterings of wings + And faint first notes, + Once babbled on the boughs + Of faded springs. + + Is it music from the graves + Of all things fair + Trembling on the staves + Of spacious air-- + Fluted by the winds + Songs with no words-- + Sonatas from the throats + Of master birds? + + One peering through the husk + Of darkness thrown + May hear it in the dusk-- + That ancient tone, + Silvery as the light + Of long dead stars + Yet falling through the night + In trembling bars. + + A WORN ROSE + + Where to-day would a dainty buyer + Imbibe your scented juice, + Pale ruin with a heart of fire; + Drain your succulence with her lips, + Grown sapless from much use... + Make minister of her desire + A chalice cup where no bee sips-- + Where no wasp wanders in? + + Close to her white flesh housed an hour, + One held you... her spent form + Drew on yours for its wasted dower-- + What favour could she do you more? + Yet, of all who drink therein, + None know it is the warm + Odorous heart of a ravished flower + Tingles so in her mouth's red core... + + IRON WINE + + The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine, + It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies, + And purple, like the blood of elderberries. + Surely it is a strong wine--juice distilled of the fierce iron. + I am drunk of its fumes. + I feel its fiery flux + Diffusing, permeating, + Working some strange alchemy... + So that I turn aside from the goodly board, + So that I look askance upon the common cup, + And from the mouths of crucibles + Suck forth the acrid sap. + + DISPOSSESSED + + Tender and tremulous green of leaves + Turned up by the wind, + Twanging among the vines-- + Wind in the grass + Blowing a clear path + For the new-stripped soul to pass... + + The naked soul in the sunlight... + Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight + On the hill-side shimmering. + + Dance light on the wind, little soul, + Like a thistle-down floating + Over the butterflies + And the lumbering bees... + + Come away from that tree + And its shadow grey as a stone... + + Bathe in the pools of light + On the hillside shimmering-- + Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain-- + + But do not linger and look + At that bleak thing under the tree. + + THE STAR + + Last night + I watched a star fall like a great pearl into the sea, + Till my ego expanding encompassed sea and star, + Containing both as in a trembling cup. + + THE TIDINGS + (Easter 1916) + + Censored lies that mimic truth... + Censored truth as pale as fear... + My heart is like a rousing bell-- + And but the dead to hear... + + My heart is like a mother bird, + Circling ever higher, + And the nest-tree rimmed about + By a forest fire... + + My heart is like a lover foiled + By a broken stair-- + They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street, + And I am not there! + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHETTO AND OTHER POEMS *** + +***** This file should be named 4332.txt or 4332.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/3/4332/ + +Produced by Catherine Daly + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + + + +This etext was produced by Catherine Daly. + + + + +The Ghetto +Lola Ridge + +TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE + +Will you feast with me, American People? +But what have I that shall seem good to you! + +On my board are bitter apples +And honey served on thorns, +And in my flagons fluid iron, +Hot from the crucibles. + +How should such fare entice you! + +CONTENTS + +The Ghetto +Manhattan +Broadway +Flotsam +Spring +Bowery Afternoon +Promenade +The Fog +Faces +Debris +Dedication +The Song of Iron +Frank Little at Calvary +Spires +The Legion of Iron +Fuel +A Toast +"The Everlasting Return," +Palestine +The Song +To the Others +Babel +The Fiddler +Dawn Wind +North Wind +The Destroyer +Lullaby +The Foundling +The Woman with Jewels +Submerged +Art and Life +Brooklyn Bridge +Dreams +The Fire +A Memory +The Edge +The Garden +Under-Song +A Worn Rose +Iron Wine +Dispossessed +The Star +The Tidings + +The larger part of the poem entitled "The Ghetto" appeared originally in +THE NEW REPUBLIC and some of poems were printed in THE INTERNATIONAL, +OTHERS, POETRY, etc. To the editors who first published the poems the author +makes due acknowledgment. + +THE GHETTO + +I + +Cool, inaccessible air +Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights, +But no breath stirs the heat +Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto +And most on Hester street... + +The heat... +Nosing in the body's overflow, +Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close, +Covering all avenues of air... + +The heat in Hester street, +Heaped like a dray +With the garbage of the world. + +Bodies dangle from the fire escapes +Or sprawl over the stoops... +Upturned faces glimmer pallidly-- +Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, +And moist faces of girls +Like dank white lilies, +And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air + as at empty teats. + +Young women pass in groups, +Converging to the forums and meeting halls, +Surging indomitable, slow +Through the gross underbrush of heat. +Their heads are uncovered to the stars, +And they call to the young men and to one another +With a free camaraderie. +Only their eyes are ancient and alone... + +The street crawls undulant, +Like a river addled +With its hot tide of flesh +That ever thickens. +Heavy surges of flesh +Break over the pavements, +Clavering like a surf-- +Flesh of this abiding +Brood of those ancient mothers who saw the dawn break over Egypt... +And turned their cakes upon the dry hot stones +And went on +Till the gold of the Egyptians fell down off their arms... +Fasting and athirst... +And yet on... + +Did they vision--with those eyes darkly clear, +That looked the sun in the face and were not blinded-- +Across the centuries +The march of their enduring flesh? +Did they hear-- +Under the molten silence +Of the desert like a stopped wheel-- +(And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand...) +The infinite procession of those feet? + +II + +I room at Sodos'--in the little green room that was Bennie's-- +With Sadie +And her old father and her mother, +Who is not so old and wears her own hair. + +Old Sodos no longer makes saddles. +He has forgotten how. +He has forgotten most things--even Bennie who stays away + and sends wine on holidays-- +And he does not like Sadie's mother +Who hides God's candles, +Nor Sadie +Whose young pagan breath puts out the light-- +That should burn always, +Like Aaron's before the Lord. + +Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, +And night by night +I see the love-gesture of his arm +In its green-greasy coat-sleeve +Circling the Book, +And the candles gleaming starkly +On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, +Like a miswritten psalm... +Night by night +I hear his lifted praise, +Like a broken whinnying +Before the Lord's shut gate. + +Sadie dresses in black. +She has black-wet hair full of cold lights +And a fine-drawn face, too white. +All day the power machines +Drone in her ears... +All day the fine dust flies +Till throats are parched and itch +And the heat--like a kept corpse-- +Fouls to the last corner. + +Then--when needles move more slowly on the cloth +And sweaty fingers slacken +And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes-- +Sped by some power within, +Sadie quivers like a rod... +A thin black piston flying, +One with her machine. + +She--who stabs the piece-work with her bitter eye +And bids the girls: "Slow down-- +You'll have him cutting us again!" +She--fiery static atom, +Held in place by the fierce pressure all about-- +Speeds up the driven wheels +And biting steel--that twice +Has nipped her to the bone. + +Nights, she reads +Those books that have most unset thought, +New-poured and malleable, +To which her thought +Leaps fusing at white heat, +Or spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall, +Or at a protest meeting on the Square, +Her lit eyes kindling the mob... +Or dances madly at a festival. +Each dawn finds her a little whiter, +Though up and keyed to the long day, +Alert, yet weary... like a bird +That all night long has beat about a light. + +The Gentile lover, that she charms and shrews, +Is one more pebble in the pack +For Sadie's mother, +Who greets him with her narrowed eyes +That hold some welcome back. +"What's to be done?" she'll say, +"When Sadie wants she takes... +Better than Bennie with his Christian woman... +A man is not so like, +If they should fight, +To call her Jew..." + +Yet when she lies in bed +And the soft babble of their talk comes to her +And the silences... +I know she never sleeps +Till the keen draught blowing up the empty hall +Edges through her transom +And she hears his foot on the first stairs. + +Sarah and Anna live on the floor above. +Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed. +Life for her has no ritual. +She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. +Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch. +If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear flame. +It is droll that she should work in a pants factory. +--Yet where else... tousled and collar awry at her olive throat. +Besides her hands are unkempt. +With English... and everything... there is so little time. +She reads without bias-- +Doubting clamorously-- +Psychology, plays, science, philosophies-- +Those giant flowers that have bloomed and withered, scattering their seed... +--And out of this young forcing soil what growth may come-- + what amazing blossomings. + +Anna is different. +One is always aware of Anna, and the young men turn their heads + to look at her. +She has the appeal of a folk-song +And her cheap clothes are always in rhythm. +When the strike was on she gave half her pay. +She would give anything--save the praise that is hers +And the love of her lyric body. + +But Sarah's desire covets nothing apart. +She would share all things... +Even her lover. + +III + +The sturdy Ghetto children +March by the parade, +Waving their toy flags, +Prancing to the bugles-- +Lusty, unafraid... +Shaking little fire sticks +At the night-- +The old blinking night-- +Swerving out of the way, +Wrapped in her darkness like a shawl. + +But a small girl +Cowers apart. +Her braided head, +Shiny as a black-bird's +In the gleam of the torch-light, +Is poised as for flight. +Her eyes have the glow +Of darkened lights. + +She stammers in Yiddish, +But I do not understand, +And there flits across her face +A shadow +As of a drawn blind. +I give her an orange, +Large and golden, +And she looks at it blankly. +I take her little cold hand and try to draw her to me, +But she is stiff... +Like a doll... + +Suddenly she darts through the crowd +Like a little white panic +Blown along the night-- +Away from the terror of oncoming feet... +And drums rattling like curses in red roaring mouths... +And torches spluttering silver fire +And lights that nose out hiding-places... +To the night-- +Squatting like a hunchback +Under the curved stoop-- +The old mammy-night +That has outlived beauty and knows the ways of fear-- +The night--wide-opening crooked and comforting arms, +Hiding her as in a voluminous skirt. + +The sturdy Ghetto children +March by the parade, +Waving their toy flags, +Prancing to the bugles, +Lusty, unafraid. +But I see a white frock +And eyes like hooded lights +Out of the shadow of pogroms +Watching... watching... + +IV + +Calicoes and furs, +Pocket-books and scarfs, +Razor strops and knives +(Patterns in check...) + +Olive hands and russet head, +Pickles red and coppery, +Green pickles, brown pickles, +(Patterns in tapestry...) + +Coral beads, blue beads, +Beads of pearl and amber, +Gewgaws, beauty pins-- +Bijoutry for chits-- +Darting rays of violet, +Amethyst and jade... +All the colors out to play, +Jumbled iridescently... +(Patterns in stained glass +Shivered into bits!) + +Nooses of gay ribbon +Tugging at one's sleeve, +Dainty little garters +Hanging out their sign... +Here a pout of frilly things-- +There a sonsy feather... +(White beards, black beards +Like knots in the weave...) + +And ah, the little babies-- +Shiny black-eyed babies-- +(Half a million pink toes +Wriggling altogether.) +Baskets full of babies +Like grapes on a vine. + +Mothers waddling in and out, +Making all things right-- +Picking up the slipped threads +In Grand street at night-- +Grand street like a great bazaar, +Crowded like a float, +Bulging like a crazy quilt +Stretched on a line. + +But nearer seen +This litter of the East +Takes on a garbled majesty. + +The herded stalls +In dissolute array... +The glitter and the jumbled finery +And strangely juxtaposed +Cans, paper, rags +And colors decomposing, +Faded like old hair, +With flashes of barbaric hues +And eyes of mystery... +Flung +Like an ancient tapestry of motley weave +Upon the open wall of this new land. + +Here, a tawny-headed girl... +Lemons in a greenish broth +And a huge earthen bowl +By a bronzed merchant +With a tall black lamb's wool cap upon his head... +He has no glance for her. +His thrifty eyes +Bend--glittering, intent +Their hoarded looks +Upon his merchandise, +As though it were some splendid cloth +Or sumptuous raiment +Stitched in gold and red... + +He seldom talks +Save of the goods he spreads-- +The meager cotton with its dismal flower-- +But with his skinny hands +That hover like two hawks +Above some luscious meat, +He fingers lovingly each calico, +As though it were a gorgeous shawl, +Or costly vesture +Wrought in silken thread, +Or strange bright carpet +Made for sandaled feet... + +Here an old grey scholar stands. +His brooding eyes-- +That hold long vistas without end +Of caravans and trees and roads, +And cities dwindling in remembrance-- +Bend mostly on his tapes and thread. + +What if they tweak his beard-- +These raw young seed of Israel +Who have no backward vision in their eyes-- +And mock him as he sways +Above the sunken arches of his feet-- +They find no peg to hang their taunts upon. +His soul is like a rock +That bears a front worn smooth +By the coarse friction of the sea, +And, unperturbed, he keeps his bitter peace. + +What if a rigid arm and stuffed blue shape, +Backed by a nickel star +Does prod him on, +Taking his proud patience for humility... +All gutters are as one +To that old race that has been thrust +From off the curbstones of the world... +And he smiles with the pale irony +Of one who holds +The wisdom of the Talmud stored away +In his mind's lavender. + +But this young trader, +Born to trade as to a caul, +Peddles the notions of the hour. +The gestures of the craft are his +And all the lore +As when to hold, withdraw, persuade, advance... +And be it gum or flags, +Or clean-all or the newest thing in tags, +Demand goes to him as the bee to flower. +And he--appraising +All who come and go +With his amazing +Slight-of-mind and glance +And nimble thought +And nature balanced like the scales at nought-- +Looks Westward where the trade-lights glow, +And sees his vision rise-- +A tape-ruled vision, +Circumscribed in stone-- +Some fifty stories to the skies. + +V + +As I sit in my little fifth-floor room-- +Bare, +Save for bed and chair, +And coppery stains +Left by seeping rains +On the low ceiling +And green plaster walls, +Where when night falls +Golden lady-bugs +Come out of their holes, +And roaches, sepia-brown, consort... +I hear bells pealing +Out of the gray church at Rutgers street, +Holding its high-flung cross above the Ghetto, +And, one floor down across the court, +The parrot screaming: +Vorwärts... Vorwärts... + +The parrot frowsy-white, +Everlastingly swinging +On its iron bar. + +A little old woman, +With a wig of smooth black hair +Gummed about her shrunken brows, +Comes sometimes on the fire escape. +An old stooped mother, +The left shoulder low +With that uneven droopiness that women know +Who have suckled many young... +Yet I have seen no other than the parrot there. + +I watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs +Feebly, with futile reach +And fingers without clutch. +Her thews are slack +And curved the ruined back +And flesh empurpled like old meat, +Yet each conspires +To feed those guttering fires +With which her eyes are quick. + +On Friday nights +Her candles signal +Infinite fine rays +To other windows, +Coupling other lights, +Linking the tenements +Like an endless prayer. + +She seems less lonely than the bird +That day by day about the dismal house +Screams out his frenzied word... +That night by night-- +If a dog yelps +Or a cat yawls +Or a sick child whines, +Or a door screaks on its hinges, +Or a man and woman fight-- +Sends his cry above the huddled roofs: +Vorwärts... Vorwärts... + +VI + +In this dingy cafe +The old men sit muffled in woollens. +Everything is faded, shabby, colorless, old... +The chairs, loose-jointed, +Creaking like old bones-- +The tables, the waiters, the walls, +Whose mottled plaster +Blends in one tone with the old flesh. + +Young life and young thought are alike barred, +And no unheralded noises jolt old nerves, +And old wheezy breaths +Pass around old thoughts, dry as snuff, +And there is no divergence and no friction +Because life is flattened and ground as by many mills. + +And it is here the Committee-- +Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin +And supple of spine and knee, +With shining unpouched eyes +And the blood, high-powered, +Leaping in flexible arteries-- +The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee, +Who would placard tombstones +And scatter leaflets even in graves, +Comes trampling with sacrilegious feet! + +The old men turn stiffly, +Mumbling to each other. +They are gentle and torpid and busy with eating. +But one lifts a face of clayish pallor, +There is a dull fury in his eyes, like little rusty grates. +He rises slowly, +Trembling in his many swathings like an awakened mummy, +Ridiculous yet terrible. +--And the Committee flings him a waste glance, +Dropping a leaflet by his plate. + +A lone fire flickers in the dusty eyes. +The lips chant inaudibly. +The warped shrunken body straightens like a tree. +And he curses... +With uplifted arms and perished fingers, +Claw-like, clutching... +So centuries ago +The old men cursed Acosta, +When they, prophetic, heard upon their sepulchres +Those feet that may not halt nor turn aside for ancient things. + +VII + +Here in this room, bare like a barn, +Egos gesture one to the other-- +Naked, unformed, unwinged +Egos out of the shell, +Examining, searching, devouring-- +Avid alike for the flower or the dung... +(Having no dainty antennae for the touch and withdrawal-- +Only the open maw...) + +Egos cawing, +Expanding in the mean egg... +Little squat tailors with unkempt faces, +Pale as lard, +Fur-makers, factory-hands, shop-workers, +News-boys with battling eyes +And bodies yet vibrant with the momentum of long runs, +Here and there a woman... + +Words, words, words, +Pattering like hail, +Like hail falling without aim... +Egos rampant, +Screaming each other down. +One motions perpetually, +Waving arms like overgrowths. +He has burning eyes and a cough +And a thin voice piping +Like a flute among trombones. + +One, red-bearded, rearing +A welter of maimed face bashed in from some old wound, +Garbles Max Stirner. +His words knock each other like little wooden blocks. +No one heeds him, +And a lank boy with hair over his eyes +Pounds upon the table. +--He is chairman. + +Egos yet in the primer, +Hearing world-voices +Chanting grand arias... +Majors resonant, +Stunning with sound... +Baffling minors +Half-heard like rain on pools... +Majestic discordances +Greater than harmonies... +--Gleaning out of it all +Passion, bewilderment, pain... + +Egos yearning with the world-old want in their eyes-- +Hurt hot eyes that do not sleep enough... +Striving with infinite effort, +Frustrate yet ever pursuing +The great white Liberty, +Trailing her dissolving glory over each hard-won barricade-- +Only to fade anew... + +Egos crying out of unkempt deeps +And waving their dreams like flags-- +Multi-colored dreams, +Winged and glorious... + +A gas jet throws a stunted flame, +Vaguely illumining the groping faces. +And through the uncurtained window +Falls the waste light of stars, +As cold as wise men's eyes... +Indifferent great stars, +Fortuitously glancing +At the secret meeting in this shut-in room, +Bare as a manger. + +VIII + +Lights go out +And the stark trunks of the factories +Melt into the drawn darkness, +Sheathing like a seamless garment. + +And mothers take home their babies, +Waxen and delicately curled, +Like little potted flowers closed under the stars. + +Lights go out +And the young men shut their eyes, +But life turns in them... + +Life in the cramped ova +Tearing and rending asunder its living cells... +Wars, arts, discoveries, rebellions, travails, immolations, + cataclysms, hates... +Pent in the shut flesh. +And the young men twist on their beds in languor and dizziness + unsupportable... +Their eyes--heavy and dimmed +With dust of long oblivions in the gray pulp behind-- +Staring as through a choked glass. +And they gaze at the moon--throwing off a faint heat-- +The moon, blond and burning, creeping to their cots +Softly, as on naked feet... +Lolling on the coverlet... like a woman offering her white body. + +Nude glory of the moon! +That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped + of their linens; +Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl +Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them. +They shudder and grow faint. +And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody, +That Life, like a drunken player, +Strikes out of their clear white bodies +As out of ivory keys. + +Lights go out... +And the great lovers linger in little groups, still passionately debating, +Or one may walk in silence, listening only to the still summons of Life-- +Life making the great Demand... +Calling its new Christs... +Till tears come, blurring the stars +That grow tender and comforting like the eyes of comrades; +And the moon rolls behind the Battery +Like a word molten out of the mouth of God. + +Lights go out... +And colors rush together, +Fusing and floating away... +Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels... +Mauves, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples +And burning spires in aureoles of light +Like shimmering auras. + +They are covering up the pushcarts... +Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors-- +Little oval mirrors like tiny pools. +He shuffles up a darkened street +And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus... +The moon like a skull, +Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts. + +IX + +A sallow dawn is in the sky +As I enter my little green room. +Sadie's light is still burning... +Without, the frail moon +Worn to a silvery tissue, +Throws a faint glamour on the roofs, +And down the shadowy spires +Lights tip-toe out... +Softly as when lovers close street doors. + +Out of the Battery +A little wind +Stirs idly--as an arm +Trails over a boat's side in dalliance-- +Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat, +And Hester street, +Like a forlorn woman over-born +By many babies at her teats, +Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day. + +LIFE! +Startling, vigorous life, +That squirms under my touch, +And baffles me when I try to examine it, +Or hurls me back without apology. +Leaving my ego ruffled and preening itself. + +Life, +Articulate, shrill, +Screaming in provocative assertion, +Or out of the black and clotted gutters, +Piping in silvery thin +Sweet staccato +Of children's laughter, + +Or clinging over the pushcarts +Like a litter of tiny bells +Or the jingle of silver coins, +Perpetually changing hands, +Or like the Jordan somberly +Swirling in tumultuous uncharted tides, +Surface-calm. + +Electric currents of life, +Throwing off thoughts like sparks, +Glittering, disappearing, +Making unknown circuits, +Or out of spent particles stirring +Feeble contortions in old faiths +Passing before the new. + +Long nights argued away +In meeting halls +Back of interminable stairways-- +In Roumanian wine-shops +And little Russian tea-rooms... + +Feet echoing through deserted streets +In the soft darkness before dawn... +Brows aching, throbbing, burning-- +Life leaping in the shaken flesh +Like flame at an asbestos curtain. + +Life-- +Pent, overflowing +Stoops and façades, +Jostling, pushing, contriving, +Seething as in a great vat... + +Bartering, changing, extorting, +Dreaming, debating, aspiring, +Astounding, indestructible +Life of the Ghetto... + +Strong flux of life, +Like a bitter wine +Out of the bloody stills of the world... +Out of the Passion eternal. + + +MANHATTAN LIGHTS + +MANHATTAN + +Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, +In a vesture of gold-- +Span of innumerable arcs, +Flaring and multiplying-- +Gold at the uttermost circles fading +Into the tenderest hint of jade, +Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, +Robing the far-flung offices, +Scintillant-storied, forking flame, +Or soaring to luminous amethyst +Over the steeples aureoled-- + +Diaphanous gold, +Veiling the Woolworth, argently +Rising slender and stark +Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry, +And towers squatting graven and cold +On the velvet bales of the dark, +And the Singer's appraising +Indolent idol's eye, +And night like a purple cloth unrolled-- + +Nebulous gold +Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, +Wherein you burn... +You of unknown voltage +Whirling on your axis... +Scrawling vermillion signatures +Over the night's velvet hoarding... +Insolent, towering spherical +To apices ever shifting. + +BROADWAY + +Light! +Innumerable ions of light, +Kindling, irradiating, +All to their foci tending... + +Light that jingles like anklet chains +On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet, +Or clingles in myriad vibrations +Like trillions of porcelain +Vases shattering... + +Light over the laminae of roofs, +Diffusing in shimmering nebulae +About the night's boundaries, +Or billowing in pearly foam +Submerging the low-lying stars... + +Light for the feast prolonged-- +Captive light in the goblets quivering... +Sparks evanescent +Struck of meeting looks-- +Fringed eyelids leashing +Sheathed and leaping lights... +Infinite bubbles of light +Bursting, reforming... +Silvery filings of light +Incessantly falling... +Scintillant, sided dust of light +Out of the white flares of Broadway-- +Like a great spurious diamond +In the night's corsage faceted... + +Broadway, +In ambuscades of light, +Drawing the charmed multitudes +With the slow suction of her breath-- +Dangling her naked soul +Behind the blinding gold of eunuch lights +That wind about her like a bodyguard. + +Or like a huge serpent, iridescent-scaled, +Trailing her coruscating length +Over the night prostrate-- +Triumphant poised, +Her hydra heads above the avenues, +Values appraising +And her avid eyes +Glistening with eternal watchfulness... + +Broadway-- +Out of her towers rampant, +Like an unsubtle courtezan +Reserving nought for some adventurous night. + +FLOTSAM + +Crass rays streaming from the vestibules; +Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth; +High-flung signs +Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes; +Girls in black +Circling monotonously +About the orange lights... + +Nothing to guess at... +Save the darkness above +Crouching like a great cat. + +In the dim-lit square, +Where dishevelled trees +Tustle with the wind--the wind like a scythe +Mowing their last leaves-- +Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze-- +Pale oval arcs +Like ailing virgins, +Each out of a halo circumscribed, +Pallidly staring... + +Figures drift upon the benches +With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling-- +Slovenly figures like untied parcels, +And papers wrapped about their knees +Huddled one to the other, +Cringing to the wind-- +The sided wind, +Leaving no breach untried... + +So many and all so still... +The fountain slobbering its stone basin +Is louder than They-- +Flotsam of the five oceans +Here on this raft of the world. + +This old man's head +Has found a woman's shoulder. +The wind juggles with her shawl +That flaps about them like a sail, +And splashes her red faded hair +Over the salt stubble of his chin. +A light foam is on his lips, +As though dreams surged in him +Breaking and ebbing away... +And the bare boughs shuffle above him +And the twigs rattle like dice... + +She--diffused like a broken beetle-- +Sprawls without grace, +Her face gray as asphalt, +Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges... +Shadows ply about her mouth-- +Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree, +That dances above her its dance of dry bones. + +II + +A uniformed front, +Paunched; +A glance like a blow, +The swing of an arm, +Verved, vigorous; +Boot-heels clanking +In metallic rhythm; +The blows of a baton, +Quick, staccato... + +--There is a rustling along the benches +As of dried leaves raked over... +And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand, +Tucking the displaced paper about his knees. + +Colder... +And a frost under foot, +Acid, corroding, +Eating through worn bootsoles. + +Drab forms blur into greenish vapor. +Through boughs like cross-bones, +Pale arcs flare and shiver +Like lilies in a wind. + +High over Broadway +A far-flung sign +Glitters in indigo darkness +And spurts again rhythmically, +Spraying great drops +Red as a hemorrhage. + +SPRING + +A spring wind on the Bowery, +Blowing the fluff of night shelters +Off bedraggled garments, +And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor +Like lewd growths. + +Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other, +One--with a choir-boy's face +Twits me as I pass... +The word, like a muddied drop, +Seems to roll over and not out of +The bowed lips, +Yet dewy red +And sweetly immature. + +People sniff the air with an upward look-- +Even the mite of a girl +Who never plays... +Her mother smiles at her +With eyes like vacant lots +Rimming vistas of mean streets +And endless washing days... +Yet with sun on the lines +And a drying breeze. + +The old candy woman +Shivers in the young wind. +Her eyes--littered with memories +Like ancient garrets, +Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died-- +Ask nothing of the spring. + +But a pale pink dream +Trembles about this young girl's body, +Draping it like a glowing aura. + +She gloats in a mirror +Over her gaudy hat, +With its flower God never thought of... + +And the dream, unrestrained, +Floats about the loins of a soldier, +Where it quivers a moment, +Warming to a crimson +Like the scarf of a toreador... + +But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact +And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose. + +BOWERY AFTERNOON + +Drab discoloration +Of faces, façades, pawn-shops, +Second-hand clothing, +Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms, +Odors of rancid life... + +Deadly uniformity +Of eyes and windows +Alike devoid of light... +Holes wherein life scratches-- +Mangy life +Nosing to the gutter's end... + +Show-rooms and mimic pillars +Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules +Bosoms and posturing thighs... + +Over all the Elevated +Droning like a bloated fly. + +PROMENADE + + Undulant rustlings, + Of oncoming silk, + Rhythmic, incessant, + Like the motion of leaves... + Fragments of color + In glowing surprises... + Pink inuendoes + Hooded in gray + Like buds in a cobweb + Pearled at dawn... + Glimpses of green + And blurs of gold + And delicate mauves + That snatch at youth... + And bodies all rosily + Fleshed for the airing, + In warm velvety surges + Passing imperious, slow... + +Women drift into the limousines +That shut like silken caskets +On gems half weary of their glittering... +Lamps open like pale moon flowers... +Arcs are radiant opals +Strewn along the dusk... +No common lights invade. +And spires rise like litanies-- +Magnificats of stone +Over the white silence of the arcs, +Burning in perpetual adoration. + +THE FOG + +Out of the lamp-bestarred and clouded dusk-- +Snaring, illuding, concealing, +Magically conjuring-- +Turning to fairy-coaches +Beetle-backed limousines +Scampering under the great Arch-- +Making a decoy of blue overalls +And mystery of a scarlet shawl-- +Indolently-- +Knowing no impediment of its sure advance-- +Descends the fog. + +FACES + +A late snow beats +With cold white fists upon the tenements-- +Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters, +Like tall old slatterns +Pulling aprons about their heads. + +Lights slanting out of Mott Street +Gibber out, +Or dribble through bar-room slits, +Anonymous shapes +Conniving behind shuttered panes +Caper and disappear... +Where the Bowery +Is throbbing like a fistula +Back of her ice-scabbed fronts. + +Livid faces +Glimmer in furtive doorways, +Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys, +Smears of faces like muddied beads, +Making a ghastly rosary +The night mumbles over +And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper... +Patrolling arcs +Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line +Stalk them as they pass, +Silent as though accouched of the darkness, +And the wind noses among them, + Like a skunk +That roots about the heart... + +Colder: +And the Elevated slams upon the silence +Like a ponderous door. +Then all is still again, +Save for the wind fumbling over +The emptily swaying faces-- +The wind rummaging +Like an old Jew... + +Faces in glimmering rows... +(No sign of the abject life-- +Not even a blasphemy...) +But the spindle legs keep time +To a limping rhythm, +And the shadows twitch upon the snow + Convulsively-- +As though death played +With some ungainly dolls. + + +LABOR + +DEBRIS + +I love those spirits +That men stand off and point at, +Or shudder and hood up their souls-- +Those ruined ones, +Where Liberty has lodged an hour +And passed like flame, +Bursting asunder the too small house. + +DEDICATION + +I would be a torch unto your hand, +A lamp upon your forehead, Labor, +In the wild darkness before the Dawn +That I shall never see... + +We shall advance together, my Beloved, +Awaiting the mighty ushering... +Together we shall make the last grand charge +And ride with gorgeous Death +With all her spangles on +And cymbals clashing... +And you shall rush on exultant as I fall-- +Scattering a brief fire about your feet... + +Let it be so... +Better--while life is quick +And every pain immense and joy supreme, +And all I have and am +Flames upward to the dream... +Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn, +Burning out the wick. + +THE SONG OF IRON + +I + +Not yet hast Thou sounded +Thy clangorous music, +Whose strings are under the mountains... +Not yet hast Thou spoken +The blooded, implacable Word... + +But I hear in the Iron singing-- +In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding-- +Thy barbaric exhortation... +And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved, +Answering Thy call... +All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice, +And sings exultant with the Iron, +For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen... + +Oh fashioned in fire-- +Needing flame for Thy ultimate word-- +Behold me, a cupola +Poured to Thy use! + +Heed not my tremulous body +That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet. +Break it... and cast it aside... +But make of my spirit +That dares and endures +Thy crucible... +Pour through my soul +Thy molten, world-whelming song. + +... Here at Thy uttermost gate +Like a new Mary, I wait... + +II + +Charge the blast furnace, workman... +Open the valves-- +Drive the fires high... +(Night is above the gates). + +How golden-hot the ore is +From the cupola spurting, +Tossing the flaming petals +Over the silt and furnace ash-- +Blown leaves, devastating, +Falling about the world... + +Out of the furnace mouth-- +Out of the giant mouth-- +The raging, turgid, mouth-- +Fall fiery blossoms +Gold with the gold of buttercups +In a field at sunset, +Or huskier gold of dandelions, +Warmed in sun-leavings, +Or changing to the paler hue +At the creamy hearts of primroses. + +Charge the converter, workman-- +Tired from the long night? +But the earth shall suck up darkness-- +The earth that holds so much... +And out of these molten flowers, +Shall shape the heavy fruit... + +Then open the valves-- +Drive the fires high, +Your blossoms nurturing. +(Day is at the gates +And a young wind...) + +Put by your rod, comrade, +And look with me, shading your eyes... +Do you not see-- +Through the lucent haze +Out of the converter rising-- +In the spirals of fire +Smiting and blinding, +A shadowy shape +White as a flame of sacrifice, +Like a lily swaying? + +III + +The ore leaping in the crucibles, +The ore communicant, +Sending faint thrills along the leads... +Fire is running along the roots of the mountains... +I feel the long recoil of earth +As under a mighty quickening... +(Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron...) +All palpitant, I wait... + + +IV + +Here ye, Dictators--late Lords of the Iron, +Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered-- +The blooded, implacable Word? +Not whispered in cloture, one to the other, +(Brother in fear of the fear of his brother...) +But chanted and thundered +On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron +Babbling in flame... + +Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled, +Manacles riven and ramparts defaced... +(Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling...) +Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced... + +Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning... +Clangor of iron smashing on iron, +Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying +Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder... + +Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring, +Battering egress through ramparted walls... +Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power, +Into the holocaust snorting and plunging... + +Mighty converters torn from their axis, +Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire, +Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen... +Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron... + +Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying... +Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending... +Shock of leviathans prone on each other... +Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore... +Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying +In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron, +Tasting the turbulent fury of living, +Mad with a moment's exuberant living! +Crash of devastating hammers despoiling.. +Hands inexorable, marring +What hands had so cunningly moulded... + +Structures of steel welded, subtily tempered, +Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore, +Torn into octaves discordantly clashing, +Chords never final but onward progressing +In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound + in mad vortices whirling... + +Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation +Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling... +The fierce obligato the steel pipes are screaming... +The blare of the rude molten music of Iron... + +FRANK LITTLE AT CALVARY + +I + +He walked under the shadow of the Hill +Where men are fed into the fires +And walled apart... +Unarmed and alone, +He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth +Where tools rested on the floors +And great cranes swung +Unemptied, on the iron girders. +And they, who were the Lords of the Hill, +Were seized with a great fear, +When they heard out of the silence of wheels +The answer ringing +In endless reverberations +Under the mountain... + +So they covered up their faces +And crept upon him as he slept... +Out of eye-holes in black cloth +They looked upon him who had flung +Between them and their ancient prey +The frail barricade of his life... +And when night--that has connived at so much-- +Was heavy with the unborn day, +They haled him from his bed... + +Who might know of that wild ride? +Only the bleak Hill-- +The red Hill, vigilant, +Like a blood-shot eye +In the black mask of night-- +Dared watch them as they raced +By each blind-folded street +Godiva might have ridden down... +But when they stopped beside the Place, +I know he turned his face +Wistfully to the accessory night... + +And when he saw--against the sky, +Sagged like a silken net +Under its load of stars-- +The black bridge poised +Like a gigantic spider motionless... +I know there was a silence in his heart, +As of a frozen sea, +Where some half lifted arm, mid-way +Wavers, and drops heavily... + +I know he waved to life, +And that life signaled back, transcending space, +To each high-powered sense, +So that he missed no gesture of the wind +Drawing the shut leaves close... +So that he saw the light on comrades' faces +Of camp fires out of sight... +And the savor of meat and bread +Blew in his nostrils... and the breath +Of unrailed spaces +Where shut wild clover smelled as sweet +As a virgin in her bed. + +I know he looked once at America, +Quiescent, with her great flanks on the globe, +And once at the skies whirling above him... +Then all that he had spoken against +And struck against and thrust against +Over the frail barricade of his life +Rushed between him and the stars... + +II + +Life thunders on... +Over the black bridge +The line of lighted cars +Creeps like a monstrous serpent +Spooring gold... + +Watchman, what of the track? + +Night... silence... stars... +All's Well! + +III + +Light... +(Breaking mists... +Hills gliding like hands out of a slipping hold...) +Light over the pit mouths, +Streaming in tenuous rays down the black gullets of the Hill... +(The copper, insensate, sleeping in the buried lode.) +Light... +Forcing the clogged windows of arsenals... +Probing with long sentient fingers in the copper chips... +Gleaming metallic and cold +In numberless slivers of steel... +Light over the trestles and the iron clips +Of the black bridge--poised like a gigantic spider motionless-- +Sweet inquisition of light, like a child's wonder... +Intrusive, innocently staring light +That nothing appals... + +Light in the slow fumbling summer leaves, +Cooing and calling +All winged and avid things +Waking the early flies, keen to the scent... +Green-jeweled iridescent flies +Unerringly steering-- +Swarming over the blackened lips, +The young day sprays with indiscriminate gold... + +Watchman, what of the Hill? + +Wheels turn; +The laden cars +Go rumbling to the mill, +And Labor walks beside the mules... +All's Well with the Hill! + +SPIRES + +Spires of Grace Church, +For you the workers of the world +Travailed with the mountains... +Aborting their own dreams +Till the dream of you arose-- +Beautiful, swaddled in stone-- +Scorning their hands. + +THE LEGION OF IRON + +They pass through the great iron gates-- +Men with eyes gravely discerning, +Skilled to appraise the tunnage of cranes +Or split an inch into thousandths-- +Men tempered by fire as the ore is +And planned to resistance +Like steel that has cooled in the trough; +Silent of purpose, inflexible, set to fulfilment-- +To conquer, withstand, overthrow... +Men mannered to large undertakings, +Knowing force as a brother +And power as something to play with, +Seeing blood as a slip of the iron, +To be wiped from the tools +Lest they rust. + +But what if they stood aside, +Who hold the earth so careless in the crook of their arms? + +What of the flamboyant cities +And the lights guttering out like candles in a wind... +And the armies halted... +And the train mid-way on the mountain +And idle men chaffing across the trenches... +And the cursing and lamentation +And the clamor for grain shut in the mills of the world? +What if they stayed apart, +Inscrutably smiling, +Leaving the ground encumbered with dead wire +And the sea to row-boats +And the lands marooned-- +Till Time should like a paralytic sit, +A mildewed hulk above the nations squatting? + +FUEL + +What of the silence of the keys +And silvery hands? The iron sings... +Though bows lie broken on the strings, +The fly-wheels turn eternally... + +Bring fuel--drive the fires high... +Throw all this artist-lumber in +And foolish dreams of making things... +(Ten million men are called to die.) + +As for the common men apart, +Who sweat to keep their common breath, +And have no hour for books or art-- +What dreams have these to hide from death! + +A TOAST + +Not your martyrs anointed of heaven-- + The ages are red where they trod-- +But the Hunted--the world's bitter leaven-- + Who smote at your imbecile God-- + +A being to pander and fawn to, + To propitiate, flatter and dread +As a thing that your souls are in pawn to, + A Dealer who traffics the dead; + +A Trader with greed never sated, + Who barters the souls in his snares, +That were trapped in the lusts he created, + For incense and masses and prayers-- + +They are crushed in the coils of your halters; + 'Twere well--by the creeds ye have nursed-- +That ye send up a cry from your altars, + A mass for the Martyrs Accursed; + +A passionate prayer from reprieval + For the Brotherhood not understood-- +For the Heroes who died for the evil, + Believing the evil was good. + +To the Breakers, the Bold, the Despoilers, + Who dreamed of a world over-thrown... +They who died for the millions of toilers-- + Few--fronting the nations alone! + +--To the Outlawed of men and the Branded, + Whether hated or hating they fell-- +I pledge the devoted, red-handed, + Unfaltering Heroes of Hell! + + +ACCIDENTALS + +"THE EVERLASTING RETURN" + +It is dark... so dark, I remember the sun on Chios... +It is still... so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean... + +Ten times we had watched the moon +Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters +And round into a full maternity... +For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh +Save the man flesh on either hand +That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea. + +The Athenian boy sat on my left... +His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine... +And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian, +Grinning Phildar +With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth. +Many a whip had coiled about him +And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels, +And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun. +He did not sing like the other slaves, +But when a big wind came up he screamed with it. +And always he looked out to sea, +Save when he tore at his fish ends +Or spat across me at the Greek boy, whose mouth was red and apart + like an opened fruit. + +We had rowed from dawn and the green galley hard at our stern. +She was green and squat and skulked close to the sea. +All day the tish of their paddles had tickled our ears, +And when night came on +And little naked stars dabbled in the water +And half the crouching moon +Slid over the silver belly of the sea thick-scaled with light, +We heard them singing at their oars... +We who had no breath for song. + +There was no sound in our boat +Save the clingle of wrist chains +And the sobbing of the young Greek. +I cursed him that his hair blew in my mouth, tasting salt of the sea... +I cursed him that his oar kept ill time... +When he looked at me I cursed him again, +That his eyes were soft as a woman's. + +How long... since their last shell gouged our batteries? +How long... since we rose at aim with a sleuth moon astern? +(It was the damned green moon that nosed us out... +The moon that flushed our periscope till it shone like a silver flame...) + +They loosed each man's right hand +As the galley spent on our decks... +And amazed and bloodied we reared half up +And fought askew with the left hand shackled... +But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets +And knotted our thews like string... +Our thews grown stiff as a crooked spine that would not straighten... + +How long... since our gauges fell +And the sea shoved us under? +It is dark... so dark... +Darkness presses hairy-hot +Where three make crowded company... +And the rank steel smells.... +It is still... so still... +I seem to hear the wind +On the dimpled face of the water fathoms above... + + +It was still... so still... we three that were left alive +Stared in each other's faces... +But three make bitter company at one man's bread... +And our hate grew sharp and bright as the moon's edge in the water. + +One grinned with his mouth awry from the long gapped teeth... +And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over... +But one struck with his hate in his hand... + +After that I remember +Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea... +The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues. + +It is still... so still, with the jargon of engines quiet. +We three awaiting the crunch of the sea +Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces... +We three sheathing hate in our hearts... +But when hate shall have made its circuit, +Our bones will be loving company +Here in the sea's den... +And one whimpers and cries on his God +And one sits sullenly +But both draw away from me... +For I am the pyre their memories burn on... +Like black flames leaping +Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea... +The sea that kneels above us... +And makes no sign. + +PALESTINE + +Old plant of Asia-- +Mutilated vine +Holding earth's leaping sap +In every stem and shoot +That lopped off, sprouts again-- +Why should you seek a plateau walled about, +Whose garden is the world? + +THE SONG + +That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks + on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron, +And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine + floating like cotton-down, +And the harsh and terrible screaming, +And that strange vibration at the roots of us... +Desire, fierce, like a song... +And we heard +(Do you remember?) +All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue +And bugles in little home towns +And children's harmonicas bleating + + America! + +And after... +(Do you remember?) +The drollery of the wind on our faces, +And horizons reeling, +And the terror of the plain +Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun... +Under us--threshing and twanging +Torn-up roots of the Song... + +TO THE OTHERS + +I see you, refulgent ones, +Burning so steadily +Like big white arc lights... +There are so many of you. +I like to watch you weaving-- +Altogether and with precision +Each his ray-- +Your tracery of light, +Making a shining way about America. + +I note your infinite reactions-- +In glassware +And sequin +And puddles +And bits of jet-- +And here and there a diamond... + +But you do not yet see me, +Who am a torch blown along the wind, +Flickering to a spark +But never out. + +BABEL + +Oh, God did cunningly, there at Babel-- +Not mere tongues dividing, but soul from soul, +So that never again should men be able +To fashion one infinite, towering whole. + +THE FIDDLER + +In a little Hungarian cafe +Men and women are drinking +Yellow wine in tall goblets. + +Through the milky haze of the smoke, +The fiddler, under-sized, blond, +Leans to his violin +As to the breast of a woman. +Red hair kindles to fire +On the black of his coat-sleeve, +Where his white thin hand +Trembles and dives, +Like a sliver of moonlight, +When wind has broken the water. + +DAWN WIND + +Wind, just arisen-- +(Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss +In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars, +Or niche of cliff under the eagles?) +You of living things, +So gay and tender and full of play-- +Why do you blow on my thoughts--like cut flowers +Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood? + +I see you +Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation +And frisking away, +Deliciously rumpling the grass... + +So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle, +Prattling of fields +Before I had had my milk... +Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One? +I--swaddled, unwinged, like a bird in the egg. + +Let be +My dreams that crackle under your breath... +You have the dust of the world to blow on... +Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... +I am too old to play with you, +Eternal Child. + +NORTH WIND + +I love you, malcontent +Male wind-- +Shaking the pollen from a flower +Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand. + +Blow on and over my dreams... +Scatter my sick dreams... +Throw your lusty arms about me... +Envelop all my hot body... +Carry me to pine forests-- +Great, rough-bearded forests... +Bring me to stark plains and steppes... +I would have the North to-night-- +The cold, enduring North. + +And if we should meet the Snow, +Whirling in spirals, +And he should blind my eyes... +Ally, you will defend me-- +You will hold me close, +Blowing on my eyelids. + +THE DESTROYER + +I am of the wind... +A wisp of the battering wind... + +I trail my fingers along the Alps +And an avalanche falls in my wake... +I feel in my quivering length +When it buries the hamlet beneath... + +I hurriedly sweep aside +The cities that clutter our path... +As we whirl about the circle of the globe... +As we tear at the pillars of the world... +Open to the wind, +The Destroyer! +The wind that is battering at your gates. + +LULLABY + +Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown... +(There's a shout at the door an' a big red light...) +Lil' coon baby, mammy is down... +Han's that hold yuh are steady an' white... + +Look piccaninny--such a gran' blaze +Lickin' up the roof an' the sticks of home-- +Ever see the like in all yo' days! +--Cain't yuh sleep, mah bit-of-honey-comb? + +Rock-a-by baby, up to the sky! +Look at the cherries driftin' by-- +Bright red cherries spilled on the groun'-- +Piping-hot cherries at nuthin' a poun'! + +Hush, mah lil' black-bug--doan yuh weep. +Daddy's run away an' mammy's in a heap +By her own fron' door in the blazin' heat +Outah the shacks like warts on the street... + +An' the singin' flame an' the gleeful crowd +Circlin' aroun'... won't mammy be proud! +With a stone at her hade an' a stone on her heart, +An' her mouth like a red plum, broken apart... + +See where the blue an' khaki prance, +Adding brave colors to the dance +About the big bonfire white folks make-- +Such gran' doin's fo' a lil' coon's sake! + +Hear all the eagah feet runnin' in town-- +See all the willin' han's reach outah night-- +Han's that are wonderful, steady an' white! +To toss up a lil' babe, blinkin' an' brown... + +Rock-a-by baby--higher an' higher! +Mammy is sleepin' an' daddy's run lame... +(Soun' may yuh sleep in yo' cradle o' fire!) +Rock-a-by baby, hushed in the flame... + +(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women flung +a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.) + +THE FOUNDLING + +Snow wraiths circle us +Like washers of the dead, +Flapping their white wet cloths +Impatiently +About the grizzled head, +Where the coarse hair mats like grass, +And the efficient wind +With cold professional baste +Probes like a lancet +Through the cotton shirt... + +About us are white cliffs and space. +No façades show, +Nor roof nor any spire... +All sheathed in snow... +The parasitic snow +That clings about them like a blight. + +Only detached lights +Float hazily like greenish moons, +And endlessly +Down the whore-street, +Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm, +The blizzard waltzes with the night. + +THE WOMAN WITH JEWELS + +The woman with jewels sits in the cafe, +Spraying light like a fountain. +Diamonds glitter on her bulbous fingers +And on her arms, great as thighs, +Diamonds gush from her ear-lobes over the goitrous throat. +She is obesely beautiful. +Her eyes are full of bleared lights, +Like little pools of tar, spilled by a sailor in mad haste for shore... +And her mouth is scarlet and full--only a little crumpled-- + like a flower that has been pressed apart... + +Why does she come alone to this obscure basement-- +She who should have a litter and hand-maidens to support her + on either side? + +She ascends the stairway, and the waiters turn to look at her, + spilling the soup. +The black satin dress is a little lifted, showing the dropsical legs + in their silken fleshings... +The mountainous breasts tremble... +There is an agitation in her gems, +That quiver incessantly, emitting trillions of fiery rays... +She erupts explosive breaths... +Every step is an adventure +From this... +The serpent's tooth +Saved Cleopatra. + +SUBMERGED + +I have known only my own shallows-- +Safe, plumbed places, +Where I was wont to preen myself. + +But for the abyss +I wanted a plank beneath +And horizons... + +I was afraid of the silence +And the slipping toe-hold... + +Oh, could I now dive +Into the unexplored deeps of me-- +Delve and bring up and give +All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, +That is yet the best. + +ART AND LIFE + +When Art goes bounding, lean, +Up hill-tops fired green +To pluck a rose for life. + +Life like a broody hen +Cluck-clucks him back again. + +But when Art, imbecile, +Sits old and chill +On sidings shaven clean, +And counts his clustering +Dead daisies on a string +With witless laughter.... + +Then like a new Jill +Toiling up a hill +Life scrambles after. + +BROOKLYN BRIDGE + +Pythoness body--arching +Over the night like an ecstasy-- +I feel your coils tightening... +And the world's lessening breath. + +DREAMS + +Men die... +Dreams only change their houses. +They cannot be lined up against a wall +And quietly buried under ground, +And no more heard of... +However deep the pit and heaped the clay-- +Like seedlings of old time +Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world-- +Dreams will to light. + +THE FIRE + +The old men of the world have made a fire +To warm their trembling hands. +They poke the young men in. +The young men burn like withes. + +If one run a little way, +The old men are wrath. +They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames. +Green withes burn slow... +And the smoke of the young men's torment +Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak, +And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky.... + +Green withes burn slow... +And the old men of the world sit round the fire +And rub their hands.... +But the smoke of the young men's torment +Ascends up for ever and ever. + +A MEMORY + +I remember +The crackle of the palm trees +Over the mooned white roofs of the town... +The shining town... +And the tender fumbling of the surf +On the sulphur-yellow beaches +As we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night. + +The moon hung above us like a golden mango, +And the moist air clung to our faces, +Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child +And we watched the out-flung sea +Rolling to the purple edge of the world, +Yet ever back upon itself... +As we... + +Inadequate night... +And mooned white memory +Of a tropic sea... +How softly it comes up +Like an ungathered lily. + +THE EDGE + +I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me... +But there was time... +And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain, + staring into the abyss... +I do not know how long... +I could not count the hours, they ran so fast +Like little bare-foot urchins--shaking my hands away... +But I remember +Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein... +And a wind came out of the grass, +Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw. + +As the night grew +The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth +Fell in ashen folds about the hills, +Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them... +There must have been a spent moon, +For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver... + +That too I remember... +And the tenderly rocking mountain +Silence +And beating stars... + +Dawn +Lay like a waxen hand upon the world, +And folded hills +Broke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold, +Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily, +Flecked with sun, +Fine as a golden pollen-- +It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow. + +I smelled the raw sweet essences of things, +And heard spiders in the leaves +And ticking of little feet, +As tiny creatures came out of their doors +To see God pouring light into his star... + +... It seemed life held +No future and no past but this... + +And I too got up stiffly from the earth, +And held my heart up like a cup... + +THE GARDEN + +Bountiful Givers, +I look along the years +And see the flowers you threw... +Anemones +And sprigs of gray +Sparse heather of the rocks, +Or a wild violet +Or daisy of a daisied field... +But each your best. + +I might have worn them on my breast +To wilt in the long day... +I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase +And watched each petal sallowing... +I might have held them so--mechanically-- +Till the wind winnowed all the leaves +And left upon my hands +A little smear of dust. + +Instead +I hid them in the soft warm loam +Of a dim shadowed place... +Deep +In a still cool grotto, +Lit only by the memories of stars +And the wide and luminous eyes +Of dead poets +That love me and that I love... +Deep... deep... +Where none may see--not even ye who gave-- +About my soul your garden beautiful. + +UNDER-SONG + +There is music in the strong + Deep-throated bush, +Whisperings of song + Heard in the leaves' hush-- +Ballads of the trees + In tongues unknown-- +A reminiscent tone + On minor keys... + +Boughs swaying to and fro + Though no winds pass... +Faint odors in the grass + Where no flowers grow, +And flutterings of wings + And faint first notes, +Once babbled on the boughs + Of faded springs. + +Is it music from the graves + Of all things fair +Trembling on the staves + Of spacious air-- +Fluted by the winds + Songs with no words-- +Sonatas from the throats + Of master birds? + +One peering through the husk + Of darkness thrown +May hear it in the dusk-- + That ancient tone, +Silvery as the light + Of long dead stars +Yet falling through the night + In trembling bars. + +A WORN ROSE + +Where to-day would a dainty buyer +Imbibe your scented juice, +Pale ruin with a heart of fire; +Drain your succulence with her lips, +Grown sapless from much use... +Make minister of her desire +A chalice cup where no bee sips-- + Where no wasp wanders in? + +Close to her white flesh housed an hour, + One held you... her spent form +Drew on yours for its wasted dower-- +What favour could she do you more? + Yet, of all who drink therein, + None know it is the warm +Odorous heart of a ravished flower +Tingles so in her mouth's red core... + +IRON WINE + +The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine, +It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies, +And purple, like the blood of elderberries. +Surely it is a strong wine--juice distilled of the fierce iron. +I am drunk of its fumes. +I feel its fiery flux +Diffusing, permeating, +Working some strange alchemy... +So that I turn aside from the goodly board, +So that I look askance upon the common cup, +And from the mouths of crucibles +Suck forth the acrid sap. + +DISPOSSESSED + +Tender and tremulous green of leaves +Turned up by the wind, +Twanging among the vines-- +Wind in the grass +Blowing a clear path +For the new-stripped soul to pass... + +The naked soul in the sunlight... +Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight +On the hill-side shimmering. + +Dance light on the wind, little soul, +Like a thistle-down floating +Over the butterflies +And the lumbering bees... + +Come away from that tree +And its shadow grey as a stone... + +Bathe in the pools of light +On the hillside shimmering-- +Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain-- + +But do not linger and look +At that bleak thing under the tree. + +THE STAR + +Last night +I watched a star fall like a great pearl into the sea, +Till my ego expanding encompassed sea and star, +Containing both as in a trembling cup. + +THE TIDINGS +(Easter 1916) + +Censored lies that mimic truth... + Censored truth as pale as fear... +My heart is like a rousing bell-- + And but the dead to hear... + +My heart is like a mother bird, + Circling ever higher, +And the nest-tree rimmed about + By a forest fire... + +My heart is like a lover foiled + By a broken stair-- +They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street, + And I am not there! + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge + diff --git a/old/ghtto10.zip b/old/ghtto10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..721a071 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ghtto10.zip |