The Ghetto VI

In this dingy cafeThe old men sit muffled in woollens.Everything is faded, shabby, colorless, old...The chairs, loose-jointed,Creaking like old bones--The tables, the waiters, the walls,Whose mottled plasterBlends in one tone with the old flesh.

Young life and young thought are alike barred,And no unheralded noises jolt old nerves,And old wheezy breathsPass around old thoughts, dry as snuff,And there is no divergence and no frictionBecause life is flattened and ground as by many mills.

And it is here the Committee--Sweet-breathed and smooth of skinAnd supple of spine and knee,With shining unpouched eyesAnd the blood, high-powered,Leaping in flexible arteries--The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee,Who would placard tombstonesAnd scatter leaflets even in graves,Comes trampling with sacrilegious feet!

The old men turn stiffly,Mumbling to each other.They are gentle and torpid and busy with eating.But one lifts a face of clayish pallor,There is a dull fury in his eyes, like little rusty grates.He rises slowly,Trembling in his many swathings like an awakened mummy,Ridiculous yet terrible.--And the Committee flings him a waste glance,Dropping a leaflet by his plate.

A lone fire flickers in the dusty eyes.The lips chant inaudibly.The warped shrunken body straightens like a tree.And he curses...With uplifted arms and perished fingers,Claw-like, clutching...So centuries agoThe old men cursed Acosta,When they, prophetic, heard upon their sepulchresThose feet that may not halt nor turn aside for ancient things.