The poet looked at the toil-scarred face of his peasant brother. For all his crude attempts at sympathy, how could he, with the stink of steam soaked into his clothes, with his poverty-crushed, sweatshop mind—how could he understand the anguish of thwarted creation, of high-hearted hopes that died unvoiced?
“But everybody got to work,” Moisheh went on. “All your poetry is grand, but it don’t pay nothing.”
“Is my heart cry nothing, then? Nothing to struggle by day and by night for the right word in this strange English, till I bleed away from the torture of thoughts that can’t come out?”
Berel stopped, and his eyes seemed transfigured with an inner light. His voice grew low and tense. Each word came deliberately, with the precision he used when swayed by poetic feeling.
“Ach, if I could only tell you of the visions that come to me! They flash like burning rockets over the city by night. Lips, eyes, a smile—they whisper to me a thousand secrets. The feelings that leap in my heart are like rainbow-coloured playthings. I toss them and wrestle with them; and yet I must harness them. Only then can they utter the truth, when they are clear and simple so that a young child could understand.”
Turning swiftly, the words hissed from the poet’s lips.
“Why do I have to bite the dirt for every little crumb you give me? I, who give my life, the beat of my heart, the blood of my veins, to bring beauty into the world—why do I have to beg—beg!”
He buried his face in his hands, utterly overcome.
Moisheh, with an accusing glance at Hanneh Breineh, as if she was in some measure to blame for this painful outburst, soothed the trembling Berel as one would a child.
“Shah!” He took from his pocket all his money. “Two dollars is all I yet got left, and on this I must stick out till my wages next Monday. But here, Berel, take half.”