| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Family Portrait | | By Leo Grudsky |
| | | THE PICTURE hangs stiffly against the wall, | |
| Rigidly framed within its final thought. | |
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| At the right, the faces of two children, | |
| Emerging from straight dresses like round flowers in a pot, | |
| Stare ahead wonderingly into a queer mist, | 5 |
| Whose changing shapes they need not fathom. | |
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| In this moment, their mother could not remember them. | |
| She sits like someone suddenly blank | |
| Before an unheard command. | |
| |
| Her tired breasts are trying, all by themselves, to rest. | 10 |
| Her legs, standing apart, do not know where they converge. | |
| Her wandering lines have all halted a moment, | |
| Like vague stray dogs, pausing along a street. | |
| |
| Her husband stands behind. | |
| In his eyes is the peace of a blind man, | 15 |
| Whose unseen face scowls fiercely, | |
| With his hands gripping hard surfaces. | |
| |
| The grandmother at the left, distant with age, | |
| Worn like a kitchen knife to almost nothing, | |
| Has gathered them all | 20 |
| Within the wrinkled labyrinth of her compassion. | | | | |
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