V

As I sit in my little fifth-floor room —

Bare,

Save for bed and chair,

And coppery stains

Left by seeping rains

On the low ceiling

And green plaster walls,

Where when night falls

Golden lady-bugs

Come out of their holes,

And roaches, sepia-brown, consort...

I hear bells pealing

Out of the gray church at Rutgers street,

Holding its high-flung cross above the Ghetto,

And, one floor down across the court,

The parrot screaming:

Vorwärts... Vorwärts...

The parrot frowsy-white,

Everlastingly swinging

On its iron bar.

A little old woman,

With a wig of smooth black hair

Gummed about her shrunken brows,

Comes sometimes on the fire escape.

An old stooped mother,

The left shoulder low

With that uneven droopiness that women know

Who have suckled many young...

Yet I have seen no other than the parrot there.

I watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs

Feebly, with futile reach

And fingers without clutch.

Her thews are slack

And curved the ruined back

And flesh empurpled like old meat,

Yet each conspires

To feed those guttering fires

With which her eyes are quick.

On Friday nights

Her candles signal

Infinite fine rays

To other windows,

Coupling other lights,

Linking the tenements

Like an endless prayer.

She seems less lonely than the bird

That day by day about the dismal house

Screams out his frenzied word...

That night by night —

If a dog yelps

Or a cat yawls

Or a sick child whines,

Or a door screaks on its hinges,

Or a man and woman fight —

Sends his cry above the huddled roofs:

Vorwärts... Vorwärts...