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 God'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.