The Ghetto, And Other Poems Part 2

Here in this room, bare like a barn, Egos gesture one to the other-- Naked, unformed, unwinged Egos out of the sh.e.l.l, 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 Pa.s.sion, 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 gla.s.s.

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 pa.s.sionately 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 G.o.d.

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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 a.s.sertion, 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 Pa.s.sing 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, pus.h.i.+ng, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y stills of the world...

Out of the Pa.s.sion eternal.