Max Michelson

From “Masks”

I

YOUR family has moulded you.

Marks of their tools and fingers

Show about your torse and face.

Your cheeks near the mouth

Are half-frozen.

Your soul flutters

Faintly.

Your flesh slopes like rose-petals.

Like rose-petals

It holds and drinks in the light.

Your humid lips

Remember the mother’s milk.

Yet there flutters about you a flame—

Maturing you, withering you.

III

In the cafeteria the girl moved briskly

In her imitation silk, sashed, hang-how-it-will dress;

Yet knocked constantly against the customs—

In taking her water, her sugar, her catsup.

In the street too she walked briskly,

The old purse dangling and the old hat moving firmly;

Of a sudden she stopped, looked about, listened—

Struck by the city—shot—like a flying bird.

Then she took herself in hand and went on.