IMAGES OF POVERTY
I :
CAMERA
IN
9TH AVE.
The derelict who groaned in the dry gutter;
signs stamped on the eyes: unbearable afternoon.
Those heaps of plaster in the condemned house,
where the evicted slept last week; the nailed doors.
Or the barber drowsing with flies on his lids;
or the grills where the dried beer decays.
Beams of the tenement famous for
20
burned; left
in charcoal like the jointed bones of the lynched.
Voracious eye, stay, stay to see
in a steep hall boys standing with
the strengthening finger of their fresh sex,
eager,- (the word chalked on the shoddy wall)–
how some will smile toward the old syphilitic.
Dust, iron, shouts, ethereal exhausts.
The cardiac baby cries on the highest floor;
the relief potatoes·boiled and blue
served on oilcloth; and the blue milk, rocking.
The rocking L; and the long cripple
vendor of lemons from white bag; and the sunburned drunk
head yelling, hands forward, adrift in the L's
regular shadows, cursing a life locked
in bars of the enraging sun.
The crowds twisting over the maimed cement;
the unemployed with bars of the L in their eyes.
9
