The Ghetto, And Other Poems Part 4

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 s.n.a.t.c.h at youth...

And bodies all rosily Fleshed for the airing, In warm velvety surges Pa.s.sing 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 ap.r.o.ns 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 clas.h.i.+ng...

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 pa.s.sion of Thy Voice, And sings exultant with the Iron, For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen...

Oh fas.h.i.+oned 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 furnace ash-- Blown leaves, devastating, Falling about the world...

Out of the furnace mouth-- Out of the giant mouth-- The raging, turgid, mouth-- Fall fiery blossoms Gold with the gold of b.u.t.tercups In a field at sunset, Or huskier gold of dandelions, Warmed in sun-leavings, Or changing to the paler hue At the creamy hearts of primroses.

Charge the converter, workman-- Tired from the long night?

But the earth shall suck up darkness-- The earth that holds so much...

And out of these molten flowers, Shall shape the heavy fruit...

Then open the valves-- Drive the fires high, Your blossoms nurturing.

(Day is at the gates And a young wind...)

Put by your rod, comrade, And look with me, shading your eyes...

Do you not see-- Through the lucent haze Out of the converter rising-- In the spirals of fire Smiting and blinding, A shadowy shape White as a flame of sacrifice, Like a lily swaying?

III

The ore leaping in the crucibles, The ore communicant, Sending faint thrills along the leads...