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April Twilights and Other Poems

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<h3>STREET IN PACKINGTOWN (CHICAGO)</h3> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> In the gray dust before a frail gray shed, By a board fence obscenely chalked in red, A gray creek willow, left from country days, Flickers pallid in the haze. </div> <div class="stanza"> Beside the gutter of the unpaved street, Tin cans and broken glass about his feet, And a brown whisky bottle, singled out For play from prosier crockery strewn about, Twisting a shoestring noose, a Polack’s brat Joylessly torments a cat. </div> <div class="stanza"> His dress, some sister’s cast-off wear, Is rolled to leave his stomach bare. His arms and legs with scratches bleed; He twists the cat and pays no heed. He mauls her neither less nor more Because her claws have raked him sore. His eyes, faint-blue and moody, stare From under a pale shock of hair. Neither resentment nor surprise Lights the desert of those eyes— To hurt and to be hurt; he knows All he will know on earth, or need to know.{61} </div> <div class="stanza"> But there, beneath his willow tree, His tribal, tutelary tree, The tortured cat across his knee, With hate, perhaps, a threat, maybe, Lithuania looks at me. {62}</div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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