arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies" Betterment LeagueArrive in the afternoon, the late light slantingIn diluted gold bars across the boulevard bragOf proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hintingHere, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,The pink paint on the innocence of fear;Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. Cutting with knives served by their softest care,Served by their love, so barbarously fair.Whose mothers taught: You"d better not be cruel!You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!Herein they kiss and coddle and assaultAnew and dearly in the innocenceWith which they baffle nature. Who are full,Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, allSweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers feltBeneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.To be a random hitching post or plush.To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.Their guild is giving money to the poor.The worthy poor. The very very worthyAnd beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dimNor—passionate. In truth, what they could wishIs—something less than derelict or dull.Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!The noxious needy ones whose battle"s baldNonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.But it"s all so bad! and entirely too much for them.The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they"re told,Something called chitterlings. The darkness. DrawnDarkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.The soil that looks the soil of centuries.And for that matter the general oldness. OldWood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.Not homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, noUnkillable infirmity of suchA tasteful turn as lately they have left,Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their carsMust presently restore them. When they"re doneWith dullards and distortions of this fisticPatience of the poor and put-upon.They"ve never seen such a make-do-ness asNewspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat,"Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the richRugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,In horror, behind a substantial citizenessWhose trains clank out across her swollen heart.Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floorAnd tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.But to put their clean, their pretty money, to putTheir money collected from delicate rose-fingersTipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . . They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings,"Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They WinterIn Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,When suitable, the nice Art Institute;Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunterOn Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibreWith fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringingsOf loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungersSo old old, what shall flatter the desolate?Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterlingAnd swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckageOf the middle passage, and urine and stale shamesAnd, again, the porridges of the underslungAnd children children children. Heavens! ThatWas a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? LongAnd long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies"Betterment League agree it will be betterTo achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,To hie to a house that does not holler, to ringBells elsetime, better presently to caterTo no more Possibilities, to getAway. Perhaps the money can be posted.Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!—Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.Keeping their scented bodies in the centerOf the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,Are off at what they manage of a canter,And, resuming all the clues of what they were,Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.
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