Saul Bennett
"Delicatessen,"
As Rendered By Brueghel The Younger
In local kosher delis men at supper sat at
long tables wearing hats,
strangers often plunked together forking sour
green tomatoes, half-sour
pickles bobbing in a common briny wooden pool,
awaiting boiled brisket platters, mushroom-barley soup
poured at table by laconic waiters
from dented tin service cups into
worn porcelain bowls.
Most hardly bothered to converse. Women were
dotted throughout but thinly, the tableau maker's
afterthought, and some, too, wore hats, little ones,
troubling rarely to talk with husbands or other men
who brought them (not to suggest, please,
for the love of a kishka plate or a corned-beef-on-club
smeared with Russian, a favors exchange).
Against this feeble glow of quiet a mysterious din
akin to the force of Flushing El cars flowing overhead
came often to overtake the arena and, once,
when an ancient waiter lost a load of dishes
I heard a patron's laugh like a firecracker
Hah!