Pietà

The child—

Warm chubby thighs, fat brown arms,

An unsurprised face—

Cries for jam.

The mother buys him with jam…

An old woman

Tottering on lean leather-skinned legs

Sucks with glazing eyes

The crystal silken milk

That flows from the death would

In an young flower-soft, jewel-soft body.

This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Others for 1919; An Anthology of the New Verse (Nicholas L. Brown, 1920).