Classic Poem

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 graves
Of submissive sternness,
Have spilled their troubled ghosts upon this mouth,
And a tortured, stoical belief
Has dwindled into tenderness upon it . . . .
He trudges off behind his push-cart
And the Ghetto walks away with him.