Читать книгу The Emek - Jessie Sampter - Страница 6

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I met her on Regeneration’s porch

One Friday evening. There were tea and talk,

And neighbors dropping in; lean men, and women

With drawn, tense looks from working overmuch,

Young, but already ageless, eloquent-eyed,

Uncorseted in cotton shirt-like frocks.

And a lady from Warsaw, visiting, in silks,

Forty or so years old, plump and well-groomed,

Speaking halt Hebrew, well-informed, well-bred

And gentle, and her daughter, a young pioneer, Batya.

The talk was of the German Emperor’s diaries,

Psychology of kings and courts and scandals

That one, a farmer’s wife, had read in Russian.

Batya talked little, listened much. Her face,

Soft as her mother’s, held a stubborn silence

Locked round with a brown bob of satiny hair.

Before we parted, I had heard: Her mother

Now came to look at her after a year of absence:

One year Batya has been a pioneer.

Link in a group, the group is her adventure.

“Come, visit us,” she said, “tomorrow morning.”

At the circumference of Nahalal, the village,

“Group B” of “The Young Watchman” pitched its tents,

Put up its barracks with the earth for carpet,

Sweated and sickened filling in the swamps,

And now is getting well at building houses—

Communal works by the young pioneers.

I asked for Batya. There, they said, her tent!

Three cots triangled under the brown mushroom;

The two were empty, Batya in the third.

Ducking in under slowly, I startled her;

But straight she sat, her head alone protruding

From the dark covers, a ripe berry. “Wait,”

She said, “don’t go. I’ll dress in just a minute!”

And in a moment, with a few swift motions

Juggling the covers, out she stepped full-dressed

In her white Sabbath frock, short sleeved, low throated,

And broidered blue around the throat and arms,

As neat, as prim, as dainty as a maiden

Who stands an hour to prink before her mirror.

Consummate art and under cover. Charmed,

I asked her by what magic she had learned

So deftly to get dressed inside her bed.

“You see,” she said—a simple explanation—

“The other two are boys—and there’s no room—

That’s why.”

“And does your mother understand?”

“My mother,” answered Batya, “is my mother.

She knows me, so she need not understand.”

“And you,” I asked, “do you like sleeping so?”

“Why not? It’s better in a tent,” she said,

“To sleep with boys; if there should be an accident,

A tent-pin break or something blow away,

They’re stronger. And besides that, we are comrades.

It’s as one chooses. And we chose it so.”

With that, one of her tent mates

Came in, a hardened youth with friendly, questioning,

Intelligent eyes and a comrade’s handshake.

“We’ll show you ’round,” says Batya, “You shall see

The chickens and the babies.” But a little

We sit upon the cots to talk.

He is ready

To answer and to argue, strong with convictions

That youth brings finished to the waiting world:

“Yes, the group may be more economical

Than the cooperative village. And the women

Are spared such cruel work; they work in shifts

With a just measure. But that’s not the question

For me,” he said, “It’s a matter of character.

Only by thus living, without possession and without desire

For personal belongings are we free,

Social and free, clean of the self-seeking

That dulls the edge of the keen sword of love.

So must we build our land with fellowship

Complete. This is to me the law, for its own sake,

Not because it is practical or economical,

Not because experience proves group life to be better,

But because truth and fellowship and freedom

Demand this abnegation. We are weak:

If we love things, we shall not love each other.”

His eyes looked straight, his mouth from a tense bow

Shot the clean arrows of his well-aimed speech,

Denying self with vivid affirmation.

“Sabbath one talks,” said Batya. “All the week

One works to prove it. And this life is good.”