Like Shiva the Hindu his feet were bound In the rhythm of stars and of streams underground: Banjo playin' and de sanded floor, Can't help dancin' though de preacher says Can't git to heaven doin' no sich ways, Can't help dancin' though de devil stan's With a pitch-fork waitin' in his brimstone han's; Got-ter-keep-dancin',-can't-stop -now, Got-ter-keep-dancin', I-doanknow-how Banjo playin' and de sanded floor, Fiddle cryin', always callin' more, People's faces lookin' scared an' white, Hands a clappin' an' eyes starin' bright. Can't help dancin' though de candle's dyin', Can't help dancin' while de fiddle's cryin'; Got-ter-keep-dancin', can't—stop— now, Got-ter-keep-dancin', -I-doanknow-how! Lola Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland, leaving there in infancy and spending her childhood in Sydney, Australia. After living some years in New Zealand, she returned to Australia to study art. In 1907, she came to the United States, supporting herself for three years by writing fiction for the popular magazines. She stopped this work only, as she says, "because I found I would have to do so if I wished to survive as an artist." For several years she earned her living in a variety of ways-as organizer for an educational movement, as advertisement writer, as illustrator, artist's model, factory-worker, etc. In 1918, The New Republic published her long poem The Ghetto and Miss Ridge, until then totally unknown, became the "discovery" of the year. Her volume The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918) contains one poem that is brilliant, several that are powerful and none that is mediocre. Her title-poem is its pinnacle; in it Miss Ridge touches strange heights. It is essentially a poem of the city, of its sodden brutalities, its sudden beauties. Swift figures shine from these lines, like barbaric colors leaping out of darkness; images that are surprising but never strained glow with a condensed clarity. In her other poems-especially in "The Song of Iron," "Faces" and "Frank Little at Calvary"—the same dignity is maintained, though with less magic. Sun-Up (1920) is less integrated, more frankly experimental. But the same vibrancy and restrained power that distinguished her preceding book are manifest here. Her delineations are sensitive and subtle; she accomplishes the maximum in effects with a minimum of effort. PASSAGES FROM "THE GHETTO” Old Sodos no longer makes saddles. He has forgotten how . . Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, And night by night I see the love-gesture of his arm And the candles gleaming starkly On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, Night by night I hear his lifted praise, Like a broken whinnying Before the Lord's shut gate. * Lights go out And the stark trunks of the factories And mothers take home their babies, Waxen and delicately curled, Like little potted flowers closed under the stars. And colors rush together, Fusing and floating away. Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels. Mauve, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples, And burning spires in aureoles of light Like shimmering auras. They are covering up the pushcarts Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors- He shuffles up a darkened street And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus. The moon like a skull, Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts. A sallow dawn is in the sky As I enter my little green room. Worn to a silvery tissue, Throws a faint glamour on the roofs, And down the shadowy spires Lights tip-toe out . . Softly as when lovers close street doors. Out of the Battery A little wind Stirs idly as an arm Trails over a boat's side in dalliance Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat, And Hester street, Like a forlorn woman over-borne By many babies at her teats, Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day. NEW ORLEANS Do you remember Honey-melon moon Dripping thick sweet light Where Canal Street saunters off by herself Wind, rising in the alleys, My spirit lifts in you like. a banner streaming free of hot walls. You are full of unshaped dreams Come into my tossing dust Scattering the peace of old deaths, Wind rising out of the alleys |