Set on a grim city block, Bodenheim’s scene turns the street itself into a kind of exhausted body: greys, browns, black rooflines, listless screams, ash cans and cellars. The speaker’s feeling is one of bleak detachment, as if the place has drained everyone of real energy. Against this, two women appear. An old woman with a hawk-like face and a bag fused to her back croons a lullaby, then digs through garbage. A wilted, beaten-looking woman slides past with a cracked stare; she moves as if the night itself is a cruel lover flogging her, and she cringes into it almost gratefully. The mood is downbeat and eerie—urban poverty rendered with both pity and an unsettling, almost dreamlike acceptance. Suffering here feels less like an event than like the street’s steady atmosphere.
Two Women on a Street — Summary
This street is callous apathy In a scale of greys and browns. Its black roof-line suggests Flat bodies unable to rise. Even its screams are listlessness Having an evil dream. Its air is swarthy rawness Troubled with ash cans and cellars.
An old woman ambles on With a black bag that seems part of her back, And a candidly hawk-like face. She croons a smothered lullaby That sifts a flitting roundness Into her sharply parted face. Then she surrenders her hand To the welter of a garbage can. A hugely wilted woman slinks by With a cracked stare on her face. Her eyes are beaten discs Of the lamplight’s ghastly keenness. She glides away as though the night Were a lover flogging her; Glides into the callous apathy Of this street, like one who cringes Happily into her lover’s hallway.