She plays. The boy on his knees with soiled thick drawers showing between his stockings and his pants plays with her.-- Meyer Lanich did not cease from work, nor his woman from silence. His face was warm in pleasure, watching his child who had a toy and a playmate.--I am all warm and full of love for Herbert Rabinowich: perhaps some day I can show him, or do something for his father. Now there was no way but to go on working, and smile so the pins in his mouth did not prick. The eyes of Esther drew a line from these two children back to the birth of the one that was hers. She dwelt in a world about the bright small room like the night: in a world that roared and wailed, that reeled with despair of her hope. She had borne this dirty child all clean beneath her heart. Her belly was sweet and white, it had borne her: her breasts were high and proud, they had emptied, they had come to sag for this dirty child on the floor--face and red lips on a floor that any shoes might step. Had she not borne a Glory through the world, bearing this stir of perfect flesh? Had she not borne a song through the harsh city? Had she not borne another mite of pain, another fleck of dirt upon the city's shame-heaps? She lies in her bed burned in sweet pain. Pain wrings her body, wrings her soul like the word of the Lord within lips of Deborah. Her bed with white sheets, her bed with its pool of blood is an altar where she lays forth her Glory which she has walking carried like a song through the harsh city.--What have I mothered but dirt?-- A transfigured world she knows she will soon see. Yes: it is a flat of little light--and the bugs seep in from the other flats no matter how one cleans--it is a man of small grace, it is a world of few windows. But her child will be borne to smite life open wide. Her child shall leap above its father and its mother as the sun above forlorn fields.--She arose from her bed. She held her child in her arms. She walked through the reeling block with feet aflame. She entered the shop.--There--squatting with feet so wide to see--her man: his needle pressed by the selfsame finger. The world was not changed for her child. Behold her child changing--let her sit for ever upon her seat of tears--let her lay like fire to her breast this endless vision of her child changing unto the world.-- --I have no voice, I have no eyes. I am a woman who has lain with the world. The world's voice upon my lips gave my mouth gladness. The world's arms about my flanks gave my flesh glory. I was big with gladness and glory. Joyful I lost in love of my vision my eyes, in love of my song my voice. I have borne another misery into the world.-- Meyer Lanich moves, putting away the trousers he has patched.--O Lord, why must I sew so many hours in order to reap my pain? Why must I work so long, heap the hard wither of so many hours upon my child who can not sleep till I do, in order that all of us may be unhappy?