The Ghetto and Other Poems | Page 8

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, fa?ades, 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