Improve Yourself

Adapted from Emanuel Litvinoff's Journey Through a Small Planet (1972)

All day I inhaled the hairs of
dead foxes, skunks and rabbits
in Dorfmann's workshop.

I slept amid the debris of failure.
God had torn up my dreams
like an impatient schoolmaster.

Dorfmann's wife, the machinist,
had big, muscular arms
and shaved every day.

Luba, the finisher, wound
braided plaits of jet-black hair
around her delicate ears.
I was her prisoner.

Thinking of her hotly,
I stroked the silken pelts
spread out on the bench.

These were the wages of lust.


Whilst looking through the Archives I came across a small scrap of paper on which had been typed, with no explanation, an extract from East End writer Emanuel Litvinoff's novel Journey Through a Small Planet (1972). The section was titled 'A Day in the Life of a Jewish Workman in the 1930s'. This poem is my adaptation of Litvinoff's prose and describes his time working as a fur nailer in London.

© Tom Chivers, May 2008
http://thisisyogic.wordpress.com