The city is old in sin,
And children are not for cities,
And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not,
You say with a broken laugh.
Yet out of each wayward softness of voice,
And each fulness of breast,
And each flute-throated echo of song,
Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things,
Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown,
Each whisper and touch in the silence of night,
Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth,
Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought,
Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain,
Arises the old and the inappeasable cry!
Every girl who leans from a tenement sill
And flutters a hand to a youth,
Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk,
Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel
That would trample truth down in the dust,
Reaches unknowingly out for its own,
And blind to its heritage waits
For its child!