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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Lola Ridge

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Fiddler

Lola Ridge

From “Chromatics”

IN a little Hungarian café

Men and women are drinking

Yellow wine in tall goblets.

Through the milky haze of the smoke,

The fiddler, undersized, blond,

Leans to his violin

As to the breast of a woman.

Red hair kindles to fire

On the black of his coat-sleeve,

Where his white, thin hand

Trembles and dives,

Like a sliver of moonlight,

When wind has broken the water.