"Osaka Elegy" (1936)

the bridge heaves its frigid under-
ground breath
on the icy osaka street. she
promenades
her lady's hat her fag smoke
her heliotrope lipstick
a woman of quiet seduction
unwilling, yet disowned
by her father
the embezzler
for whose sake she's sold off
the piece of her
that youth quickly discards
in marriage
or feckless promise.
a mistress has no
kin but an overseer -
holds her captive in a closed
corruption, an apart-
ment in osaka where no
one certain knows her name,
a kept woman kept
from her marriage & 'decency.'
on the bridge the corpulent
doctor spots her
asking, 'are you ill?'
she replies, 'ill with discontent.
an illness of delinquency.'
the doctor surmises, 'even i
have no clue how to cure
what is scaled by shame.'
the osaka standard:
a bridge at night, when the lights
wane dim & frosty, the
men on their way drunken
to their wives, the
wives warm with pleasantries:
but she the mistress
whose laugh shields her
from the averted eyes of
her family, of her wouldbe
husband, walks down
an icy bridge with no place
to go & comes toward us
toward the camera her eyes
steady & shrewd, a
delinquent, a whore -
'the law hates the crime,
not the individual.' - at
any rate the officer
arrests her & maligns
her decency, her woman-
hood. is this a moral tale?
no, it is an elegy.
...