he sets his mind to unknown arts

The cripple and a preacher
lie sleeping in a doorway, stoned on vodka.
The cripple dreams a young man painting portraits:

At the sink his mother holds a herring by its tail
and with a knife she scrapes off its scales;
before the stove, smoky shades of grey define
his father's ashen beard, a smudge of scarlet, wine;
through the window are city domes and a bridge
beyond the labyrinth of his birthplace, the herring 
and tobacco, the synagogue and scriptures.

He awakes with his trousers unbuttoned
and is hard in a hand of the preacher:
he pretends he's still asleep and pictures
Pierot in a bowler hat, a fiddler at a window.