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Rhythms (Section I)

Charles Reznikoff

1894 –

1976

The stars are hidden,
the lights are out;
the tall black houses
are ranked about.

I beat my fists
on the stout doors,
no answering steps
come down the floors.

I have walked until
I am faint and numb;
from one dark street
to another I come.

The comforting
winds are still.

This is a chaos
through which I stumble,
till I reach the void
and down I tumble.

The stars will then
be out forever;
the fists unclenched,
the feet walk never,

and all I say
blown by the wind
away.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 12, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

Born in 1894, in Brooklyn, New York, Charles Reznikoff was the author of several poetry collections and was a principal proponent of Objectivism.

About Charles Reznikoff

Themes

About this Poem

Charles Reznikoff’s Rhythms was privately printed in 1918 and again in 1927, the second time as a part of the larger collection Five Groups of Verse. In “A Story of Vocation: Charles Reznikoff’s Rhythms (1918),” Robert Franciosi, a professor in the department of English at Grand Valley State University, writes, “Rhythms begins in darkness. It is a darkness of lost hope, of an inability to articulate the words which will bring comfort. Reznikoff establishes this mood by beginning the volume with a revised version of a poem originally [titled] ‘Futility.’ The futility of the poem is in the speaker’s failure to find solace in an Eliotic setting of dark and windy streets. It is the very darkness of the scene which he cannot overcome [. . .]. The fatigue and hopelessness of the speaker is expressed in the movement of the poem as the verse pauses over these two lines which are in the middle of the six quatrains: ‘The comforting / Winds are still.’ After these lines there is a split as the poem shifts from present to future tense. The speaker anticipates the final darkness of death, in which all of his actions in life will have seemed futile. It is significant that the poem ends on the words of the speaker and their fragile nature [. . .]. More fragile than the physical body is the fate of unattended words.”

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More by this poet

[The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,]

The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,
And the lonely sun clashes like brass cymbals.

In the streets truck-horses, muscles sliding under the steaming hides,
Pound the sparks flying about their hooves;
And fires, those gorgeous beasts, squirm in the furnaces,
Under the looms weaving us.

Charles Reznikoff

1920

It had been long dark, though still an hour before supper-time.

It had been long dark, though still an hour before supper-time.
The boy stood at the window behind the curtain.
The street under the black sky was bluish white with snow.
Across the street, where the lot sloped to the pavement,
boys and girls were going down on sleds.
The boys were after him because he was a Jew.
 
At last his father and mother slept. He got up and dressed.
In the hall he took out his sled and went out on tiptoe.
No one was in the street. The slide was worn smooth and slippery--just right.
He laid himself down on his sled and shot away.

Charles Reznikoff

1927

Beggar Woman

When I was four years old my mother led me to the park.
The spring sunshine was not too warm. The street was almost empty.
The witch in my fairy-book came walking along.
She stooped to fish some mouldy grapes out of the gutter.

Charles Reznikoff

1921

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Rhythms (Section I)

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