The Ghetto and Other Poems.

by Lola Ridge.

THE GHETTO

I

Cool, inaccessible air Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights, But no breath stirs the heat Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto And most on Hester street...

The heat...

Nosing in the body's overflow, Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close, Covering all avenues of air...

The heat in Hester street, Heaped like a dray With the garbage of the world.

Bodies dangle from the fire escapes Or sprawl over the stoops...

Upturned faces glimmer pallidly-- Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, And moist faces of girls Like dank white lilies, And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air as at empty teats.

Young women pa.s.s in groups, Converging to the forums and meeting halls, Surging indomitable, slow Through the gross underbrush of heat.

Their heads are uncovered to the stars, And they call to the young men and to one another With a free camaraderie.

Only their eyes are ancient and alone...

The street crawls undulant, Like a river addled With its hot tide of flesh That ever thickens.

Heavy surges of flesh Break over the pavements, Clavering like a surf-- Flesh of this abiding Brood of those ancient mothers who saw the dawn break over Egypt...

And turned their cakes upon the dry hot stones And went on Till the gold of the Egyptians fell down off their arms...

Fasting and athirst...

And yet on...

Did they vision--with those eyes darkly clear, That looked the sun in the face and were not blinded-- Across the centuries The march of their enduring flesh?

Did they hear-- Under the molten silence Of the desert like a stopped wheel-- (And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand...) The infinite procession of those feet?

II

I room at Sodos'--in the little green room that was Bennie's-- With Sadie And her old father and her mother, Who is not so old and wears her own hair.

Old Sodos no longer makes saddles.

He has forgotten how.

He has forgotten most things--even Bennie who stays away and sends wine on holidays-- And he does not like Sadie's mother Who hides G.o.d's candles, Nor Sadie Whose young pagan breath puts out the light-- That should burn always, Like Aaron's before the Lord.

Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, And night by night I see the love-gesture of his arm In its green-greasy coat-sleeve Circling the Book, And the candles gleaming starkly On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, Like a miswritten psalm...

Night by night I hear his lifted praise, Like a broken whinnying Before the Lord's shut gate.

Sadie dresses in black.

She has black-wet hair full of cold lights And a fine-drawn face, too white.

All day the power machines Drone in her ears...

All day the fine dust flies Till throats are parched and itch And the heat--like a kept corpse-- Fouls to the last corner.

Then--when needles move more slowly on the cloth And sweaty fingers slacken And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes-- Sped by some power within, Sadie quivers like a rod...

A thin black piston flying, One with her machine.

She--who stabs the piece-work with her bitter eye And bids the girls: "Slow down-- You'll have him cutting us again!"

She--fiery static atom, Held in place by the fierce pressure all about-- Speeds up the driven wheels And biting steel--that twice Has nipped her to the bone.

Nights, she reads Those books that have most unset thought, New-poured and malleable, To which her thought Leaps fusing at white heat, Or spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall, Or at a protest meeting on the Square, Her lit eyes kindling the mob...

Or dances madly at a festival.

Each dawn finds her a little whiter, Though up and keyed to the long day, Alert, yet weary... like a bird That all night long has beat about a light.

The Gentile lover, that she charms and shrews, Is one more pebble in the pack For Sadie's mother, Who greets him with her narrowed eyes That hold some welcome back.

"What's to be done?" she'll say, "When Sadie wants she takes...

Better than Bennie with his Christian woman...

A man is not so like, If they should fight, To call her Jew..."

Yet when she lies in bed And the soft babble of their talk comes to her And the silences...

I know she never sleeps Till the keen draught blowing up the empty hall Edges through her transom And she hears his foot on the first stairs.

Sarah and Anna live on the floor above.

Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed.

Life for her has no ritual.

She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core.

Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch.

If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear flame.

It is droll that she should work in a pants factory.

--Yet where else... tousled and collar awry at her olive throat.

Besides her hands are unkempt.

With English... and everything... there is so little time.

She reads without bias-- Doubting clamorously-- Psychology, plays, science, philosophies-- Those giant flowers that have bloomed and withered, scattering their seed...

--And out of this young forcing soil what growth may come-- what amazing blossomings.

Anna is different.

One is always aware of Anna, and the young men turn their 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 st.u.r.dy Ghetto children March by the parade, Waving their toy flags, Prancing to the bugles-- l.u.s.ty, 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.