September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
| 118. The Jewish Conscript |
| By Florence Kiper Frank |
| There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar’s army alone.—Newspaper clipping. |
| THEY have dressed me up in a soldier’s dress, | |
| With a rifle in my hand, | |
| And have sent me bravely forth to shoot | |
| My own in a foreign land. | |
| Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes, | 5 |
| And many in conquest wild; | |
| But I shall die for the fatherland | |
| That murdered my little child. | |
| How many hundreds of years ago— | |
| The nations wax and cease!— | 10 |
| Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear | |
| The flaming message of peace! | |
| We are the mock and the sport of time! | |
| Yet why should I complain!— | |
| For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross, | 15 |
| He also died in vain. Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917. |
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