Here stillness sounds like echoes in a tomb.
The light falls cold upon these antique toys
Whereby men sought to turn the scales of doom:
Jade gods, a ritual of rigid boys.
Warm blood was spent for this unwindowed stone
Tinct with the painted pleasures of the dead;
For secrets of unwithering flesh and bone—
With these old Egypt’s night was comforted.
We lean upon the glass, our curious eyes
Staring at death, three thousand years remote.
And vanity, the worm that never dies,
Feeds on your silver ring and Pharaoh’s coat.
And are these heartbeats, then, less perilous?
Since death is close, and death is death for us.
_Alter Brody_
Alter Brody was born at Kartúshkiya-Beróza, Province of Grodno,
Russia, November 1, 1895. He came to New York City at the age of
eight and, after a cursory schooling, wrote translations for certain
Jewish and American newspapers. His first poems appeared in _The
Seven Arts_ in 1916-17.
In _A Family Album_ (1918) one sees the impress of a tense and
original mind, of imagination that is fed by strengthening fact, of
sight that is sharpened by insight. Many of Brody’s lines are
uncouth and awkward; what music he achieves is mostly fortuitous,
the melody accidental. And yet his pages are filled with a
picturesque honesty and uncompromising beauty. Much of this work is
an interpretation of the modern world against a background of old
dreams: young America seen through the eyes of old Russia. It is a
romantic realism that uplifts such poems as “Kartúshkiya-Beróza” (a
record of boyhood which is one of Brody’s finest achievements
though, unfortunately, too long to quote), “A Row of Poplars:
Central Park,” “Ghetto Twilight” and the poignant “Lamentations.” It
is, to be more accurate, a romanticism that springs from reality
and, after a fantastic flight, settles back with a new vision.