(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women flung a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.)
Snow wraiths circle usLike washers of the dead,Flapping their white wet clothsImpatientlyAbout the grizzled head,Where the coarse hair mats like grass,And the efficient windWith cold professional basteProbes like a lancetThrough the cotton shirt…
About us are white cliffs and space.No façades show,Nor roof nor any spire…All sheathed in snow…The parasitic snowThat clings about them like a blight.
Only detached lightsFloat hazily like greenish moons,And endlesslyDown the whore-street,Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm,The blizzard waltzes with the night.
The woman with jewels sits in the cafe,Spraying light like a fountain.Diamonds glitter on her bulbous fingersAnd on her arms, great as thighs,Diamonds gush from her ear-lobes over the goitrous throat.She is obesely beautiful.Her eyes are full of bleared lights,Like little pools of tar, spilled by a sailor in mad haste for shore…And her mouth is scarlet and full—only a little crumpled—like a flower that has been pressed apart…
Why does she come alone to this obscure basement—She who should have a litter and hand-maidens to support heron either side?
She ascends the stairway, and the waiters turn to look at her,spilling the soup.The black satin dress is a little lifted, showing the dropsical legsin their silken fleshings…The mountainous breasts tremble…There is an agitation in her gems,That quiver incessantly, emitting trillions of fiery rays…She erupts explosive breaths…Every step is an adventureFrom this…The serpent's toothSaved Cleopatra.
I have known only my own shallows—Safe, plumbed places,Where I was wont to preen myself.
But for the abyssI wanted a plank beneathAnd horizons…
I was afraid of the silenceAnd the slipping toe-hold…
Oh, could I now diveInto the unexplored deeps of me—Delve and bring up and giveAll that is submerged, encased, unfolded,That is yet the best.
When Art goes bounding, lean,Up hill-tops fired greenTo pluck a rose for life.
Life like a broody henCluck-clucks him back again.
But when Art, imbecile,Sits old and chillOn sidings shaven clean,And counts his clusteringDead daisies on a stringWith witless laughter….
Then like a new JillToiling up a hillLife scrambles after.
Pythoness body—archingOver the night like an ecstasy—I feel your coils tightening…And the world's lessening breath.
Men die…Dreams only change their houses.They cannot be lined up against a wallAnd quietly buried under ground,And no more heard of…However deep the pit and heaped the clay—Like seedlings of old timeHooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world—Dreams will to light.
The old men of the world have made a fireTo warm their trembling hands.They poke the young men in.The young men burn like withes.
If one run a little way,The old men are wrath.They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames.Green withes burn slow…And the smoke of the young men's tormentRises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak,And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky….
Green withes burn slow…And the old men of the world sit round the fireAnd rub their hands….But the smoke of the young men's tormentAscends up for ever and ever.
I rememberThe crackle of the palm treesOver the mooned white roofs of the town…The shining town…And the tender fumbling of the surfOn the sulphur-yellow beachesAs we sat… a little apart… in the close-pressing night.
The moon hung above us like a golden mango,And the moist air clung to our faces,Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a childAnd we watched the out-flung seaRolling to the purple edge of the world,Yet ever back upon itself…As we…
Inadequate night…And mooned white memoryOf a tropic sea…How softly it comes upLike an ungathered lily.
I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me…But there was time…And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,staring into the abyss…I do not know how long…I could not count the hours, they ran so fastLike little bare-foot urchins—shaking my hands away…But I rememberSomewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein…And a wind came out of the grass,Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.
As the night grewThe gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackclothFell in ashen folds about the hills,Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them…There must have been a spent moon,For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver…
That too I remember…And the tenderly rocking mountainSilenceAnd beating stars…
DawnLay like a waxen hand upon the world,And folded hillsBroke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold,Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily,Flecked with sun,Fine as a golden pollen—It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow.
I smelled the raw sweet essences of things,And heard spiders in the leavesAnd ticking of little feet,As tiny creatures came out of their doorsTo see God pouring light into his star…
… It seemed life heldNo future and no past but this…
And I too got up stiffly from the earth,And held my heart up like a cup…
Bountiful Givers,I look along the yearsAnd see the flowers you threw…AnemonesAnd sprigs of graySparse heather of the rocks,Or a wild violetOr daisy of a daisied field…But each your best.
I might have worn them on my breastTo wilt in the long day…I might have stemmed them in a narrow vaseAnd watched each petal sallowing…I might have held them so—mechanically—Till the wind winnowed all the leavesAnd left upon my handsA little smear of dust.
InsteadI hid them in the soft warm loamOf a dim shadowed place…DeepIn a still cool grotto,Lit only by the memories of starsAnd the wide and luminous eyesOf dead poetsThat love me and that I love…Deep… deep…Where none may see—not even ye who gave—About my soul your garden beautiful.
There is music in the strongDeep-throated bush,Whisperings of songHeard in the leaves' hush—Ballads of the treesIn tongues unknown—A reminiscent toneOn minor keys…
Boughs swaying to and froThough no winds pass…Faint odors in the grassWhere no flowers grow,And flutterings of wingsAnd faint first notes,Once babbled on the boughsOf faded springs.
Is it music from the gravesOf all things fairTrembling on the stavesOf spacious air—Fluted by the windsSongs with no words—Sonatas from the throatsOf master birds?
One peering through the huskOf darkness thrownMay hear it in the dusk—That ancient tone,Silvery as the lightOf long dead starsYet falling through the nightIn trembling bars.
Where to-day would a dainty buyerImbibe your scented juice,Pale ruin with a heart of fire;Drain your succulence with her lips,Grown sapless from much use…Make minister of her desireA chalice cup where no bee sips—Where no wasp wanders in?
Close to her white flesh housed an hour,One held you… her spent formDrew on yours for its wasted dower—What favour could she do you more?Yet, of all who drink therein,None know it is the warmOdorous heart of a ravished flowerTingles so in her mouth's red core…
The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine,It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies,And purple, like the blood of elderberries.Surely it is a strong wine—juice distilled of the fierce iron.I am drunk of its fumes.I feel its fiery fluxDiffusing, permeating,Working some strange alchemy…So that I turn aside from the goodly board,So that I look askance upon the common cup,And from the mouths of cruciblesSuck forth the acrid sap.
Tender and tremulous green of leavesTurned up by the wind,Twanging among the vines—Wind in the grassBlowing a clear pathFor the new-stripped soul to pass…
The naked soul in the sunlight…Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlightOn the hill-side shimmering.
Dance light on the wind, little soul,Like a thistle-down floatingOver the butterfliesAnd the lumbering bees…
Come away from that treeAnd its shadow grey as a stone…
Bathe in the pools of lightOn the hillside shimmering—Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain—
But do not linger and lookAt that bleak thing under the tree.
Last nightI watched a star fall like a great pearl into the sea,Till my ego expanding encompassed sea and star,Containing both as in a trembling cup.
THE TIDINGS(Easter 1916)
Censored lies that mimic truth…Censored truth as pale as fear…My heart is like a rousing bell—And but the dead to hear…
My heart is like a mother bird,Circling ever higher,And the nest-tree rimmed aboutBy a forest fire…
My heart is like a lover foiledBy a broken stair—They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street,And I am not there!
End of Project Gutenberg's The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge