The Ghetto and Other Poems | Page 7

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