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,

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.