The Ghetto and Other Poems | Page 5

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