At times I blink twice, even thrice
at Chicago, a city that used to be nice
where I grew up in a lower-middle class milieu
but never was discriminated against as a Jew …
Today I live in an upper-middle class part of the city
and what folks shout at me is not very pretty
Swastikas drawn on our schools, even attempts at murder
An Israeli friend just visited us ~ what she witnessed unnerved her
We've got fascists on the left
Nazis on the right
Supremacists in the middle
All dressed up in white
As commies come in colors
That are hard at times to see
They're still a colorful array
Of daily catastrophe
Socialists here to tell us
As a matter of fact you can
Take candy from a baby
And put it in someone else's hand
With elitists at the top
To tell us how to breathe
And the poor without a paddle
At the bottom of the stream
And while I'm at it, what life doesn't matter
In the grand scheme of things
Be it red, black, yellow, white
Or fluorescent Martian green
All I really want
Is to be left alone
In my lower middle class
Without your fine tooth comb
Hate who and what you like
Just please leave me be
And I'll leave you alone
To your insanity
The girl is an ultra-modern scholar,
Belongs with an upper-middle class family.
Looking very nice, smart, gets angry suddenly.
She reads M.A in English at Presidency University.
She is assimilating to the ideas of Shakespeare,
Shelley, Keats, Neruda, Byron...
Fluently speaks English, loves cricket.
Shoulders are shaken by expression.
She cries alone, laughs with everyone....
The girl is very good.
The boy is a post-modern educated son of a lower-middle class family.
He studies M.A in Bengali at Calcutta University.
He is assimilating to the routes of Vaishnab literature,
Ideas of Bharatchandra, Rabindranath Tagore, Nazrul, Jibanananda...
Writes poems, sings song, loves football.
He walks on the high-street and observes people.
He laughs alone, listens to everyone...
The boy is very good.
They are attracted by the opposite personality!
The girl wants that her lover will be a modern man.
The boy thinks that his lover will become as the mind of his.
They are changing silently
Losing individuality.
Time flows.
Love goes to another address...
OLD TIME NEIGHBORHOOD (1934)
Reborn a wrinkled old child
Inhaling the smell of budget
Walking those cracked skated-on sidewalks
Old trees with grainy knothole eyes
standing arm-wrapping round thick so strong
Noisy kids uncaring – knee-patched barefoot Noisy kids carried on a listened-for
breeze
A scrawny let-out-of-doors cat darts dares to
cross the one-way street
Lower middle class?
Yes
But respectfully litter-clean!
No liquor bottles in the gutter - no wretched used
dried-putrid condoms
A Victrola whales from an apartment house window
“I’m confessin’” (that I love you)
And a drunk stumbles home at 8:00 in the morning
Houses with large long porches meant to be
sat upon at sundown on hot days
And
Oh, yes!
There are tears
“Road of life”
She identifies
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