POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
MIRELLA DANCES
I
Sadie Bimberg—that's her name
Down in Houston Street;
And her brother, Isidore,
With his family—wife, and four—
Lives there now, unknown to fame:
He sells Kosher meat.
Sadie used to work
In Lasalle's department store;
Wasn't thirteen when she started
(White and scrawny with big eyes
Black and lustrous, and black hair
In two pig-tails tied with red;
Over-tall and under-fed!)
On the dubious ascent
Toward a living wage . . . But shirk—
Always, from the very first—
All she durst!
Dared to dream she wasn't meant
To live in a tenement,
Help her mother pay the rent:
"What a foolishness," thought Sadie,
"I was born to be a lady!"
[18]
