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“CALL Rose Costara!”
Insolent she comes. | |
| The watchers, practiced, keen, turn down their thumbs. | |
| The walk, the talk, the face,—that shell-pink tint,— | |
| It is old stuff; they read her like coarse print. | |
| Here is no hapless innocence waylaid. | 5 |
| This is a stolid worker at her trade. | |
| Listening, she yawns; half smiling, undismayed, | |
| Shrugging a little at the law’s delay, | |
| Bored and impatient to be on her way. | |
| It is her eighth conviction. Out beyond the rail | 10 |
| A lady novelist in search of types turns pale. | |
| She meant to write of them just as she found them, | |
| And with no tears of maudlin glamour round them, | |
| In forceful, virile words, harsh, true words, without shame, | |
| Calling an ugly thing, boldly, an ugly name; | 15 |
| Sympathy, velvet glove, on purpose, iron hand. | |
| But eighth conviction! All the phrases she had planned | |
| Fail; “sullen,” “vengeful,” no, she isn’t that. | |
| No, the pink face beneath the hectic hat | |
| Gives back her own aghast and sickened stare | 20 |
| With a detached and rather cheerful air, | |
| And then the little novelist sees red. | |
| From her chaste heart all clemency is fled. | |
| “Oh, loathsome! venomous! Off with her head! | |
| Call Rose Costara!” But before you stop, | 25 |
And shelve your decent rage,
Let’s call the cop. | |
| |
| Let’s call the plain-clothes cop who brought her in. | |
| The weary-eyed night watchman of the law, | |
| A shuffling person with a hanging jaw, | |
| Loose-lipped and sallow, rather vague of chin, | 30 |
| Comes rubber-heeling at his Honor’s rap. | |
| He set and baited and then sprung the trap— | |
| The trap—by his unsavory report. | |
Let’s ask him why—but first
Let’s call the court. | |
| |
| Not only the grim figure in the chair, | 35 |
| Sphinx-like above the waste and wreckage there, | |
| Skeptical, weary of a retold tale, | |
| But the whole humming hive, the false, the frail,— | |
| An old young woman with a weasel face, | |
| A lying witness waiting in his place, | 40 |
| Two ferret lawyers nosing out a case, | |
| Reporters questioning a Mexican, | |
| Sobbing her silly heart out for her man, | |
| Planning to feature her, “lone, desperate, pretty,” | |
Yes, call the court. But wait!
Let’s call the city. | 45 |
| |
| Call the community! Call up, call down, | |
| Call all the speeding, mad, unheeding town! | |
| Call rags and tags and then call velvet gown! | |
| Go, summon them from tenements and clubs, | |
| On office floors and over steaming tubs! | 50 |
| Shout to the boxes and behind the scenes, | |
| Then to the push-carts and the limousines! | |
| Arouse the lecture-room, the cabaret! | |
| Confound them with a trumpet-blast and say, | |
| “Are you so dull, so deaf and blind indeed, | 55 |
| That you mistake the harvest for the seed?” | |
Condemn them for—but stay!
Let’s call the code— | |
| |
| That facile thing they’ve fashioned to their mode: | |
| Smug sophistries that smother and befool, | |
| That numb and stultify; that clumsy thing | 60 |
| That measures mountains with a three-foot rule, | |
| And plumbs the ocean with a puddling-string— | |
| The little, brittle code. Here is the root, | |
| Far out of sight, and buried safe and deep, | |
| And Rose Costara is the bitter fruit. | 65 |
| On every limb and leaf, death, ruin, creep. | |
| |
| So, lady novelist, go home again. | |
| Rub biting acid on your little pen. | |
| Look back and out and up and in, and then | |
| Write that it is no job for pruning-shears. | 70 |
| Tell them to dig for years and years and years | |
| The twined and twisted roots. Blot out the page; | |
| Invert the blundering order of the age; | |
| Reverse the scheme: the last shall be the first. | |
| Summon the system, starting with the worst— | 75 |
| The lying, dying code! On, down the line, | |
| The city, and the court, the cop. Assign | |
| The guilt, the blame, the shame! Sting, lash, and spur! | |
| Call each and all! Callus! And then call her! | |
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