Lola RIDGE: 2 Poems
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Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
DEDICATION
I would be a torch unto your hand,
A lamp upon your forehead, Labor,
In the wild darkness before the Dawn
That I shall never see…
We shall advance together, my Beloved,
Awaiting the mighty ushering…
Together we shall make the last grand charge
And ride with gorgeous Death
With all her spangles on
And cymbals clashing…
And you shall rush on exultant as I fall–
Scattering a brief fire about your feet…
Let it be so…
Better–while life is quick
And every pain immense and joy supreme,
And all I have and am
Flames upward to the dream…
Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn,
Burning out the wick.
FACES
A late snow beats
With cold white fists upon the tenements–
Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters,
Like tall old slatterns
Pulling aprons about their heads.
Lights slanting out of Mott Street
Gibber out,
Or dribble through bar-room slits,
Anonymous shapes
Conniving behind shuttered panes
Caper and disappear…
Where the Bowery
Is throbbing like a fistula
Back of her ice-scabbed fronts.
Livid faces
Glimmer in furtive doorways,
Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys,
Smears of faces like muddied beads,
Making a ghastly rosary
The night mumbles over
And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper…
Patrolling arcs
Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line
Stalk them as they pass,
Silent as though accouched of the darkness,
And the wind noses among them,
Like a skunk
That roots about the heart…
Colder:
And the Elevated slams upon the silence
Like a ponderous door.
Then all is still again,
Save for the wind fumbling over
The emptily swaying faces–
The wind rummaging
Like an old Jew…
Faces in glimmering rows…
(No sign of the abject life–
Not even a blasphemy…)
But the spindle legs keep time
To a limping rhythm,
And the shadows twitch upon the snow
Convulsively–
As though death played
With some ungainly dolls.
LOLA RIDGE POETRY
kempis.nl poetry magazine
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