The Ghetto II

I room at Sodos'--in the little green room that was Bennie's--With SadieAnd 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 awayand sends wine on holidays--And he does not like Sadie's motherWho hides God's candles,Nor SadieWhose 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 nightI see the love-gesture of his armIn its green-greasy coat-sleeveCircling the Book,And the candles gleaming starklyOn the blotched-paper whiteness of his face,Like a miswritten psalm...Night by nightI hear his lifted praise,Like a broken whinnyingBefore the Lord's shut gate.

Sadie dresses in black.She has black-wet hair full of cold lightsAnd a fine-drawn face, too white.All day the power machinesDrone in her ears...All day the fine dust fliesTill throats are parched and itchAnd the heat--like a kept corpse--Fouls to the last corner.

Then--when needles move more slowly on the clothAnd sweaty fingers slackenAnd 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 eyeAnd 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 wheelsAnd biting steel--that twiceHas nipped her to the bone.

Nights, she readsThose books that have most unset thought,New-poured and malleable,To which her thoughtLeaps 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 birdThat all night long has beat about a light.

The Gentile lover, that she charms and shrews,Is one more pebble in the packFor Sadie's mother,Who greets him with her narrowed eyesThat 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 bedAnd the soft babble of their talk comes to herAnd the silences...I know she never sleepsTill the keen draught blowing up the empty hallEdges through her transomAnd 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 headsto look at her.She has the appeal of a folk-songAnd 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 hersAnd the love of her lyric body.

But Sarah's desire covets nothing apart.She would share all things...Even her lover.