Stolen Riches (Edward Dorn / Russell Lee)

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Cherry orchards, farm land and irrigation ditch at Emmett, Idaho: photo by Russell Lee, July 1941

That worn clothes look

as nice

on the children down the road

playing and running in the afternoon

that these clothes are used,

these castoffs

we are castoff from – all the elegant

running little retailers, here

and in the next crossroads town.

.....But the dress one little girl

blithely wore, unaware

an argument as to the ways of society

was going on around her –

a long yellow dress

flowers

pulled in at the waist, nearly

sweeping the ground.

Oh, they are now pagan

these old castoffs,

but as rationale one sees the grime

sees the face broken in dark lines of consumption.

.....Of wearing secretly a burden,

costumes fitting as casually as though

they were stolen,

from the wealth

of the nation.

Children looking at picture books at school, Santa Clara, Utah: photo by Russell Lee, July 1941

Bill Stagg turning up his beans, Pie Town, New Mexico. He will next pile them for curing: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Russell Lee photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

The Argument Is: Edward Dorn, from The Newly Fallen, 1961