His Hands

IN TWO CITIES

HIS HANDS

Leningrad

Petro, with pulled-down cap and misty smile,

Moved, in a lover's caress,

His oil-black fingers over his machine.

Only three years ago

Barefoot, grotesque in flying rags,

He chased and chattered in the country stations

Coaxing a kopek from the carriage windows,

Stealing a goods-truck ride;

At night those fingers

Snatched, quick as swallows, from the passengers

Bread, bottles, cases, rugs and shoes

His urchin gang-mates shared.

Petro, beside his new-installed machine,

Feeding the skilful plunge and click,

Preferred not to remember

His Father's murdered look among the horses,

Those ratlike years after the fighting,

The screwing hunger as they crouched for trains -

A landscape blocked out now

By this new town of grain and tractors

Flowering where gales blew over empty steppes

Only three years ago,

In whose blood-throb he feels his hands

Moving over the responsive iron

Move with a thousand others out of dark.

SO MANY VOICES

Vienna

Peaceful is the look of these old streets;

The doves are rustling in the square,

The sunshades newly hoisted in the parks,

The world of stars and fashion

Sipping coffee as the band plays.

Peace seems to ripen in the city of dances;

Here are April's mountain blooms for sale, and open purses,

And the young man stepping orderly to work

Hears, coaxed by handbill and hoarding,