Explore "East-Side: New York" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ An old Jew munches an apple, / With conquering immersion / All the thwarted longings of his life / Urge on his determined teeth. / His face is hard and pear-shaped; / His eyes are muddy capitulations; / But his mouth is incongruous. / Softly, slightly distended, / Like that of a whistling girl, / It is ingenuously haunting / And makes the rest of him a soiled, grey background. / Hopes that lie within their grave / Of submissive sternness, / Have spilled their troubled ghosts upon this mouth, / And a tortured belief / Has dwindled into tenderness upon it. / He trudges off behind his push-cart / And the Ghetto walks away with him.