The Ghetto and Other Poems | Page 5

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:?Vorw?rts... Vorw?rts...
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