The Ghetto, and Other Poems

Produced by Catherine Daly
The Ghetto Lola Ridge
Will you feast with me, American People? But what have I that shall seem good to you!
On my board are bitter apples And honey served on thorns, And in my flagons fluid iron, Hot from the crucibles.
How should such fare entice you!
The Ghetto Manhattan Broadway Flotsam Spring Bowery Afternoon Promenade The Fog Faces Debris Dedication The Song of Iron Frank Little at Calvary Spires The Legion of Iron Fuel A Toast The Everlasting Return, Palestine The Song To the Others Babel The Fiddler Dawn Wind North Wind The Destroyer Lullaby The Foundling The Woman with Jewels Submerged Art and Life Brooklyn Bridge Dreams The Fire A Memory The Edge The Garden Under-Song A Worn Rose Iron Wine Dispossessed The Star The Tidings
The larger part of the poem entitled The Ghetto appeared originally in THE NEW REPUBLIC and some of poems were printed in THE INTERNATIONAL, OTHERS, POETRY, etc. To the editors who first published the poems the author makes due acknowledgment.
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— Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, And moist faces of girls Like dank white lilies, And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air as at empty teats.
Young women pass in groups, Converging to the forums and meeting halls, Surging indomitable, slow Through the gross underbrush of heat. Their heads are uncovered to the stars, And they call to the young men and to one another With a free camaraderie. Only their eyes are ancient and alone…