one
  To that old race that has been thrust
  From off the curbstones of the world…
  And he smiles with the pale irony
  Of one who holds
  The wisdom of the Talmud stored away
  In his mind's lavender.

  But this young trader,
  Born to trade as to a caul,
  Peddles the notions of the hour.
  The gestures of the craft are his
  And all the lore
  As when to hold, withdraw, persuade, advance…
  And be it gum or flags,
  Or clean-all or the newest thing in tags,
  Demand goes to him as the bee to flower.
  And he—appraising
  All who come and go
  With his amazing
  Slight-of-mind and glance
  And nimble thought
  And nature balanced like the scales at nought—
  Looks Westward where the trade-lights glow,
  And sees his vision rise—
  A tape-ruled vision,
  Circumscribed in stone—
  Some fifty stories to the skies.

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…

VI

  In this dingy cafe
  The 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 plaster
  Blends 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 breaths
  Pass around old thoughts, dry as snuff,
  And there is no divergence and no friction
  Because life is flattened and ground as by many mills.

  And it is here the Committee—
  Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin
  And supple of spine and knee,
  With shining unpouched eyes
  And the blood, high-powered,
  Leaping in flexible arteries—
  The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee,
  Who would placard tombstones
  And 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 ago
  The old men cursed Acosta,
  When they, prophetic, heard upon their sepulchres
  Those feet that may not halt nor turn aside for ancient things.

VII

  Here in this room, bare like a barn,
  Egos gesture one to the other—
  Naked, unformed, unwinged
  Egos out of the shell,
  Examining, searching, devouring—
  Avid alike for the flower or the dung…
  (Having no dainty antennae for the touch and withdrawal—
  Only the open maw…)

  Egos cawing,
  Expanding in the mean egg…
  Little squat tailors with unkempt faces,
  Pale as lard,
  Fur-makers, factory-hands, shop-workers,
  News-boys with battling eyes
  And bodies yet vibrant with the momentum of long runs,
  Here and there a woman…

  Words, words, words,
  Pattering like hail,
  Like hail falling without aim…
  Egos rampant,
  Screaming each other down.
  One motions perpetually,
  Waving arms like overgrowths.
  He has burning eyes and a cough
  And a thin voice piping
  Like a flute among trombones.

  One, red-bearded, rearing
  A welter of maimed face bashed in from some old wound,
  Garbles Max Stirner.
  His words knock each other like little wooden blocks.
  No one heeds him,
  And a lank boy with hair over his eyes
  Pounds upon the table.
  —He is chairman.

  Egos yet in the primer,
  Hearing world-voices
  Chanting grand arias…
  Majors resonant,
  Stunning with sound…
  Baffling minors
  Half-heard like rain on pools…
  Majestic discordances
  Greater than harmonies…
  —Gleaning out of it all
  Passion, bewilderment, pain…

  Egos yearning with the world-old want in their eyes—
  Hurt hot eyes that do not sleep enough…
  Striving with infinite effort,
  Frustrate yet ever pursuing
  The great white Liberty,
  Trailing her dissolving glory over each hard-won barricade—
  Only to fade anew…

  Egos crying out of unkempt deeps
  And waving their dreams like flags—
  Multi-colored dreams,
  Winged and glorious…

  A gas jet throws a stunted flame,
  Vaguely illumining the groping faces.
  And through the uncurtained window
  Falls the waste light of stars,
  As cold as wise men's eyes…
  Indifferent great stars,
  Fortuitously