After thirty years, she could stand it no longer.
Her legs would no longer bear the weight
of it. There was no disease; her numbness
didn’t follow neural logic. She seemed relieved,
distressed more by foreign news,
the Nazi’s were rounding up the Jews.
So was her spouse the tyrant, the brooding
presence in the marriage bed?
Brooklyn Credit’s next in charge,
the token Hebrew on the payroll, whose
flaccid hatreds disavow his race
and persecute his wife.
Confined in their domestic fortress,
her legs refuse to do her duty,
to withold her infant man,
or bear his burden of suspicion
when that same dark hate forces old women
to scrub the pavement with a toothbrush.
Lacking support, his despairing heart rages, then stops.
She stands numb with pity and walks towards him.
Broken Glass by Arthur Miller stars Anthony Cher and Tara Fitzgerald and is currently playing at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn before moving to the Vaudeville in The Strand next week.
