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).