Noye, to me thou arte full able,
And thy sacrifice acceptable,
For I have founde thee true and stable;
On thee nowe muste I myne [think];
Warrye [curse] eairth I will noe more
For mannes synnes that greves me sore,
For of youth mon [man] full yore
Has bene inclynde to synne.
You shall nowe growe and multiplye,
And eairth againe to edifye,
…

Of cleane beastes nowe lesse and more
I give you leve to eate;
Save bloode and fleshe, bouth in feare
Of rouge dead carrion that is heare,
Eate not of that in noe manere,

Ilion, o my city,
no longer will you be named among the cities
never taken: lost in the Greek stormcloud,
speared, sacked,
your wreath of towers hacked
from your head: sorry, fouled
in the smoke and the ash strain,
sad city
I shall not walk in you again.

Ruin came at midnight.
We were in our room, sleep-eyed, happy,
tired, with the dancing over
and the songs for our won war,
everything over, my husband resting,
his weapons hung on the wall,
no Greeks to be seen any more,
the armed fleet
lost from our shores and gone.

A sallow dawn is in the sky
As I enter my little green room.
Sadie's light is still burning …
Without, the frail moon
Worn to a silvery tissue,
Throws a faint glamour on the roofs,
And down the shadowy spires
Lights tip-toe out …
Softly as when lovers close street doors.

Out of the Battery
A little wind
Stirs idly—as an arm
Trails over a boat's side in dalliance—
Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat,
And Hester street,
Like a forlorn woman over-born
By many babies at her teats,

Lights go out
And the stark trunks of the factories
Melt into the drawn darkness,
Sheathing like a seamless garment.

And mothers take home their babies,
Waxen and delicately curled,
Like little potted flowers closed under the stars.

Lights go out
And the young men shut their eyes,
But life turns in them …
Life in the cramped ova
Tearing and rending asunder its living cells …
Wars, arts, discoveries, rebellions, travails, immolations, cataclysms, hates …
Pent in the shut flesh.

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 antennæ 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 …

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.

Calicoes and furs,
Pocket-books and scarfs,
Razor strops and knives
(Patterns in check …)

Olive hands and russet head,
Pickles red and coppery,
Green pickles, brown pickles,
(Patterns in tapestry …)

Coral beads, blue beads,
Beads of pearl and amber,
Gewgaws, beauty pins—
Bijoutry for chits—
Darting rays of violet,
Amethyst and jade …
All the colors out to play,
Jumbled iridescently …
(Patterns in stained glass
Shivered into bits!)

Nooses of gay ribbon
Tugging at one's sleeve,

The sturdy Ghetto children
March by the parade,
Waving their toy flags,
Prancing to the bugles—
Lusty, unafraid …
Shaking little fire sticks
At the night—
The old blinking night—
Swerving out of the way,
Wrapped in her darkness like a shawl.

But a small girl
Cowers apart.
Her braided head,
Shiny as a black-bird's
In the gleam of the torch-light,
Is poised as for flight.
Her eyes have the glow
Of darkened lights.

She stammers in Yiddish,
But I do not understand,
And there flits across her face

In this dingy café
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.

Cool inaccessible air
Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights,
But no breath stirs the heat
Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto
And most on Hester street …

The heat …
Nosing in the body's overflow,
Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close,
Covering all avenues of air …

The heat in Hester street,
Heaped like a dray
With the garbage of the world.

Bodies dangle from the fire escapes
Or sprawl over the stoops …
Upturned faces glimmer pallidly—