EPITAPH
Careful! Tread softly stranger,
Don't disturb my slumber.
It took all my strength to get here,
And I'm nameless as a number.
But should you feel the itch to know
Who is it that lies below
Open your album and jot this down:
"Here lies a poet with a kingly crown
Who died of drinking his own sweet brew--
Honeyed song that held arsenic too."
Yiddish
Commentary
Autobiographic
While others were learning from rows of books--
Civility, fine manners,
The glory of nations and names of stars--
Life was preparing a tribal gift for me:
A back like an ox to carry a heavy destiny,
Hands as hard as oak,
And a fine feeling for iambics and rhyme.
In my eighth year
I was wholly familiar
With pangs of hunger and wounds of the soul.
And, as memory of homeland can never be numb,
How well I recall how we guarded every crumb;
Salt codfish and bread, washed down with water,
Small as I was, already a tormented young hater.
Tears of my mother, how clear through the years;
Sighs of my granddad at his yellowed Gemarah.
And children, so sickly, blistered and bitten.
In me--a dog's loyalty, and the gentleness of a kitten.
And a blonde peasant girl, gooseberry-eyed…
What I tell not my mother, to her I confide.
In an attic where doves are cooing,
There still lies my theft, a book by Gorky--
In the margin this note:"Oh God, help me please,
Someday I too shall write poems like these."
But to me has been dealt a fate like Lear's:
A darkened throne room at the abyss edge
And nowhere for the king to take his stance.
My misery speaks, my bitterness shrieks,
Along with thousands, down here I sit
In the gutter where everyone may spit,
And thence--my muse and song of romance.
Yiddish
Audio in English
I
Am Poor
My neighbor has everything--
Bread and land and fame,
He plays his life like a lively waltz,
His name is like a shield of flame;
Everywhere his banners wave,
And even God is his slave.
A little bird lives in a cage of gold,
Trilling its song both night and day--
Of spring in a forest of Cathay,
But the song stirs no one,
The song awakens no one.
My neighbor is rich, his life is good,
And--not so good, perhaps.
But I am poor and have nothing,
Only a hammer and a chisel and a saw,
But when the burning sky like an arm of God
Sends me home to my four silent walls
I am weary,
And cannot lift my hands to Him,
And when I try--down they fall,
Because these hands are heavier than their burden
And God is to me one, the first and the last,
And my heart is full and swelling,
And my eyes are deep and overflowing.
I am poor and have nothing at all
But a hammer and chisel and saw,
And a diamond that lights my darkling song,
And a tear that burns in my prayer to God.
Yiddish
Come,
Enemies, Disperse Us
We molder in your flourishing land,
We who have been blessed and cursed
With a burdensome will-to-live
And the dream solace of the Mavier Yabok.*
We have slender hands and Argus-eyes.
We've seen it all, and--all has flown away.
Glory and the conquest--not our bubbles.
We are Jobs, standing in ruins,
With a sharpened hypersense
Of the basic laws of life.
Our nerves vibrate like seismic signals
Telling of impending earth upheavals,
Yet there can be no dissolution
Of the ancient tribe;
There can be no destruction
Of its rich heritage.
Tribe of voluptuaries, ascetics and martyrs,
Tragic tribe of archetypes
With kitlen, thallisim and mezuzahs,
Followers of archaic, outlandish muses,
Fulfilling a parchment-yellow and pearl-gray destiny.
We are windborne, floating; we swim
Like oil-drops on secluded streams.
We cannot dissolve,
We cannot drown,
And your streams do not dry out.
* The prayer for safe passage
Yiddish
Interlude
And once again I call to you
Almighty one, for aid.
But my voice is lost in the night
As when a lamb among wolves has strayed.
I know where you are,
Where you always are,
But I see you not.
And here I am
Hanging midway--
Not in the heights
Nor yet in the depths.
I hold tight
With all my might
Like a stubborn tear.
I tremble in fear
As when the breeze
Moves through the trees.
Oh, cut me off, I cry
Asking only for my rights
Decide once and for all
Fly or fall.
I am ready for my fate…
Whether I rise to the golden aureole
Or descend to the worms that wait.
Before
You, My God
Before you, my God, arises my despair;
The hour of grief has come whose burden I must bear,
I hear the seagulls flying in the night
But all is quiet in my "four ells of space."
My sorrow rises cold and thin
And spreads like sea foam over the shore.
And your primordial spirit mingling with my sadness
Hovers over me and over all dead things.
My prayer:
Open your depths to my loneliness;
Closer, closer to you.
Oh God, what will I do--
Soon they will be here
Bringing street-roar and shackling pity.
Heavy and in vain
As falls the dark rain
Through desolate nights upon a stream
Will fall their talk
On my soul.
Yiddish
White
Flaming Sanctuary
Like a wind blustering
Over hilltop and forest
Will I come to the door of your temple--
The long-sought white flaming sanctuary.
On all fours will I kneel before you:
God of the great world,
I am weary under the enemy's yoke,
Weary and defenseless.
Like a waterflower my silence.
Like a knife my grief in the night.
Misery clings to my walls.
Darkness spreads itself over me.
All is lost.
My God, my God--
Come to the rescue of those who lean on me
Like mimosas in a storm.
And if I will not find you there--
Where else shall I look?
With my hands raised on high,
With a heart plucked bare,
Hard is the earth
And closed is the sky.
Yiddish
Remembrance
Of all the sons, daughters and grandchildren
That my grandfather had sent forth to all four
Sad corners of the earth--
I am the only one who stopped stock still
In the stream, and perhaps the last one who remembers
The door which would wink invitingly to every pauper:
The broad table with its temptation of free food,
Grace after the meals like the cooing in dovecotes;
Peddlers with their carts, baskets and packs,
Tanned peasants with oats and potato sacks;
A pair of Talmudists immersed in chess
Meditating clues, what does this or that signify?
After evening prayer the oil lamp light falls on books and tea
And the lovesick one who sings at her sewing:
"Anyessi moye dusho"*--like fire in wool
The woman's voice burns into the heart of the guest.
Satin yarmelkes on foreheads like chalk,
And in every alcove someone smiles under silken ruffles.
Sabbaths, holidays like a carnival
And a certain word often repeated--"Khazal"**
Days under a veil of gold and pain.
Nights of tender longing and moonlit beauty.
And something else that sparkles in the memory-
A bare trace from the child's years of anguish:
A wagon, a train and a gallop of houses
And before the eyes swim white milestones
And like a melody from an old song of love
There still rings my grandfather's "Be a Jew."
· "Carry my soul into the blue yonder"-the
first words of a famous Russian song by S. Frug
** "Our sages of blessed memory"
Yiddish
Go
And Tell Them
Go out into the street and address
All those who deal in godless holiness;
Tell them commandingly when they've come
Like the wonder-worker in the Hippodrome
That goat-footed Pan with the silvered flute
Plays his lies because he needs no bread.
And Zacharia, the gaiter-maker, and you and me,
We know that it isn't the fault of the Diety
That the tailor lacks a coat and the carpenter a roof.
And then tell them this further truth:
The words which the authority of God invoke
Must be bare and thin as cigarette smoke.
But the truth won't come from those committees
That deal in Days of Awe purities.
And if they don't believe you, show your callouses to them all,
And they can hit their heads against the wall
If they won't see that this is the reward
Which God pays and gives in the form of bread.
And go home and do as did Bialik and Moishe Laib,
Grit your teeth and weep and scold and praise
That fate of yours which is already near its end
And which a demon had planned…
Yiddish
Stains
On The Words
Someday you will come from far away
Seeking out my "palace, my salon";
I'll leave you a marker--
A sign on the dunghill,
Beware--contagion is here.
And bronzed neighbors glaring their hate
Singing tarry songs in the blue evening,
"Let my people go."
And you will understand, I know,
The despair of the mourners sitting shiva.
You will ask: and what did he leave?
They'll show you--tear stains on the words,
He wouldn't permit himself more…
Refused to write out the text.
(You will praise me for that).
Far into the sky you'll gaze
And savor like poison on your palate,
The meaning of the stains and scribbles.
You will come, I know you will come
When I will be amid the nasty smells
Crawling through the tangled weeds
Darkling against the stars
Scalding like poems through tears.
Yiddish
In
Front Of The Mirror
Sometimes I say to myself when alone--
"Harsh as the sound of stone upon stone
Falls judgment on me in double degree--
Facts of the scholar but acts of the fool.
See how you strive with paper and pen
To portray the loveliness of--ruin.
Why do you think there's even a chance
To get any fame from such a stance?
You push your name in every review
When the very ground falls from under you?
Go sing about a bird that sings in the tree
When you don't even hear it or believe it is there!
A bird should sing in the cold and the wind?
How do you dare to play such a joke
On all those innocent, harmless folk?"
Yiddish
To
The Twinkler Of Heavenly Sorrow
I feel I must fly to the North Star
Whose diamond light lets me not wake or sleep;
Is there peace and joy in that tower up there?
And I recall the line from the heart
Of that the Prince of poets:
---"Would I were steadfast as thou art."
A mistake, my friend, I see it from here.
It too is a captive, it too was tricked
By destiny into shining forever and ever.
I feel it wants to fall.
It wearies of its double role:
Burning with light, spreading sorrow of night.
And as he comes past that cloud of amber
I will leap like a leopard, a leopard!
To that Midas--the star of the North
And in open anger demand to know:
"Since you are as lonely and sad as me
Why do you mock me and let me not wake or sleep?"
Yiddish
Retrospect
Autumn. A few cold stars.
As if through broken organ reeds
The last symphony of summer is sounding.
How many times the leaves have fallen
On the ashen twilight of the grass.
But there is inscribed a moment in memory
By a gentle and steady hand,
Time, place and things--
Shavings on a turbulent stream.
Even now I love to recall
Like a sorrowful melody
The half-forgotten name
Of a peasant Anabel-Lee.
Among white birches there is a path
Where only the moon and the gnomes are awake,
And far away there is a floating wake
Of a solitary peasant and his cart.
And something else; there is a tryst
Beneath a bush where bodies will not rest.
Body and body and blood like coral--
And then a pathos of silence.
Through a clouded film
Two pairs of eyes in tears--
And in the heart a lament like a psalm.
Yiddish
AI-Le-Lu
Under your little crib there stands no little white kid,
And your father has not gone to sell raisins at the fair,
But with a saw and a hammer on the twelfth story somewhere
He builds palaces for strangers,
Palaces for strangers,
Ai-le-lu.
Weary and silent, your father comes home with
the setting sun
(As night falls the sky is filled with burning brands)
He stretches forth his work stiffened hands
And kisses your tiny fingers,
Your tiny fingers,
Ai-le-lu.
And be brings you a manikin, all pale and rubbery;
You give it a turn and it will leap and run--
It looks like the old clothes man of the slum
Who spreads sorrow on the stairs,
Sorrow on the stairs.
Ai-le-lu.
After supper your father sings a little song
to you
And then tells you a tale about the ferocious bear
Who lurks in the woods and stalks the wanderer
Going through the woods,
The wild, wild woods,
Ai-le-lu.
Yiddish
Commentary
The
Days I Have Lived
The days I have lived stand sentry over me
Who lives in the center- shackled, surrounded.
To my ears there come the words that one says to another:
"Do not release him from his blindfolded captivity
Until all that we've entrusted to him
Is paid in full."
Humbly and mute
I move in the ring of my demanding days,
Into which comes each day a fresh creditor;
Each moment a new link in the chain,
Tighter, surer the fence
And greater, heavier the debt.
A prisoner, I stand, and I pay
And I pay, and I pay--
All my joy and redness of my blood,
The oaken height of my body,
Sparkling wetness of my eye--
And they, the days of the life I have lived
Take all I give, demand more, and laugh at me all the while.
Yiddish
On
Our Street
The truth about our street is not what the painter will paint.
What do I care if he smears our roof with gold of the sun,
When he doesn't know how familiarly death looks into our windows,
And he hasn't seen the faces of mothers in hunger.
Like ships in a fog, our days our devoured by
labor--
Six days in the week tramp on elephant feet,
And rest-day and holiday--here, read my notes:
The picnic flavors of hot dogs and other men's wives.
See there in the twilight--a faded girl is walking
Like a sorrowful clown in pursuit of the sadness within.
Though she washed her one blouse to bolster her price,
Break of day brings a shudder at her eczema-flame.
And our children--they shriek headlines at every
corner:
A cat has died; an ape has miscarried in silks.
In the bright-lit distance a bald eunuch sings moon-songs
While the waiter listens gravely in mummy-like trance.
And nothing is ours on the table we've set--
Not even our sorrow, which, like a berusted razor
Cannot cut, but only tickles the painter's unseeing eye
As it begs him: prettify me in gold like a lie.
Yiddish
Double
Burden
Heavy have grown my hands--
Stone gray and hard.
Crowbar and hammer have bent in my back.
Flaming sun has blackened my skin.
Salty sweat stings in my eyes.
From labors, no let-up.
From foes, no mercy.
And my muse demands one more thing:
"More blood in the ink."
Yiddish
Death
Death is not a fierce old man,
No need to let him frighten you;
He brings no bell or rataplan
And rests you under grass and dew.
Life is the one that bedazzles your eyes
And causes your steps to go astray;
He taunts you with the rainbow
And what's beyond-he will not say.
But death is not a fearsome tiger
Nor a sightless God of stone;
Death tweaks the noses of proud victors
And brings the homeless--home.
Yiddish
Memento
Mori
Picture now the land were all men are alike
Where a moon shines silently on a lake
And a giant eye-of-mercy watches the last rendezvous
Of the one who yearns for rest long overdue.
Nothing breaks, nothing interrupts this everlasting night.
All burdens become featherlight.
Here lie little hills ruled off in rows,
But under them the rot begins and new life grows.
Oh Mother Earth, I know not how, but I feel
That somewhere within there is a regulating wheel
Of bloom and blight, of growth and decline
(Chicken or egg--both riddle and design).
It's only that I lack the hara-kiri zest
Or I might myself now lie down and rest
In your comforting green emptiness
Alongside all the tired, nameless Jobs of eternity
Who, enduring all, resisted to the door of death
The wish to wallow in self-disgusting-pity.
Grass covers all.
Where is that ruin over which no grass has grown?
But not the anguish of those who death have known.
It is the wolf who biting off the leg caught in the trap,
Licks the hot wound, and feels triumph in the act.
It is the forest tree after the lighting strike
That shakes itself and grows higher yet.
But not Homo sapiens, in God's image, and with woven net of nerves,
Where find for him each day a new meaning in life that serves
To explain the evil of the mighty Lilliputian brood
Who strike down brothers and bathe in their blood?
Meaning for those mind-and-body congenital ills
Bearing microbes and suffering till it kills,
A meaning for the weakness of the loins
Which senility and old age enjoins.
Slowly the old heart still beats out its part,
Sclerotic lungs still sip the air,
And the call of the worms falls on the ear--
The worms are calling for Prometheus!
Oh then bow your head and speak thus:
What is the worth of joy which has not been nourished by a tear?
How right The Preacher--there is nothing new under the stratosphere.
There falls snow, there shines sun--and once more the grass will grow.
Where the beginning, where the end--the circle no seam does show.
Therefore be bold just once, and gratefully grasp the hand
Of death which like the gardener with a rosebush, will replant
You in another labyrinth, He tucks you in and smiles
Caressingly, like a mother tending to her child.
Yours is then the true the everlasting peace which is your due.
And what then do you lack, what more do you want, you coward, you?
Yiddish
To
The One On The Cross
From my grandfather's forests long ago
And black rafts floating in the Dnieper's flow-
Familiar to me the fragrance of wood.
The white gleam of springy shavings
Has often dazzled my eyes.
And how many times my heart has beaten with pride
After days of toil and victory over logs and boards,
Seeing finished the table, cabinet and buffet.
There is a joy in making beautiful, useful things
When caressing with hypersense the smoothness
Of molding, cornices and panelings,
Deeply the pleasure of creation sings
And heart beats with power.
But I also know the road to the marketplace;
Oh it is there I take my work, my beautiful toil,
My toil, my splendor, to the fat and boorish fool
And meekly accept a stone as my reward
Because the oppressor's first is iron hard;
The words of balm (they're disturbing too!)
How patiently the slender worm is waiting
Where he will open the fist and soften it.
But when the day wanes in silence and sorrow
As my life amidst the prosaic misery of the poor,
I'm embraced by the vast evening sadness,
Like a rock in the sea--
And save myself, I cannot;
When hot words burn on the palate--
And speak them, I cannot.
Oh then, I feel that I'm like you,
Carpenter of Nazareth.
Yiddish
If
I Am Like The Worm
If I am like the worm that coils in the dust,
Then am I also a creation of your mighty hand.
And dust is my life, the food that I love,
So I thank you, God, for this.
Only when the radiant sun flames out at me,
A leaf of the shade tree you gave Jonah, give me.
If I am like the flowing streams in the valley
Which you have sent on their eternal chase
With glitter and fire-run to the farthest sea
I lift my hands to you and I say:
I thank you for this.
I too have a goal, I too have a base.
If I am like the stone in a lonely path
For whom you have found a secure place on the earth,
How could I, my God, not thank you for that:
At least I am something with a role to play
And can be a place of rest for a beggar in need.
But if I am not like the worm and not like the
stream,
And am not even at last like the stone,
I still lift my hands to you, God, and I say:
I thank you for all:
Let me be as I am, let me be what I am.
But a sign of my being let stay when I'm gone.
Yiddish
My
Neighbor Laughs
My neighbor laughs at what I do,
My efforts are to him inane.
A man, he says, a man like you
Ought not spend his nights in vain.
A man worthwhile must sleep at night
For by day he follows the duty bell.
He strives not with words knit tight
To offer dreamers, dreams to tell.
You see says he I have a wife and child
And land and sheep and cattle.
I've not been by dreams beguiled
And my work has won the battle.
But you, he asks--what have you from your songs,
What get you from your reverie?
No comfort unto you belongs
And your death will be in poverty.
Yiddish
Trees
Trees die not alone.
They take along with them:
The violins of the winds,
The hymns of the nests
The mirrors of the sun,
The laughter of leaves,
And a delicate perfume.
They leave behind only the mystery
Of their unity and patience.
Trees die not alone.
Trees don't die like men.
Yiddish
Silence
Beyond Words
In the silence of the night
The trees stand in melancholy calm.
Only a faint rustle of leaves.
On high---a star tremor.
Fireflies flash in the folded bed linen of the fields.
Silence streams from the moon,
Silence covers the world.
And from my heart there comes joy,
Joy that overflows in courage, praise
And expectation of honors.
How quick the flight to highest height;
The fall into deepest abyss.
Yiddish
Elegy
For A Tree
Eighteen years he stood beside my window
And with the curiosity of a dog's nose
He probed with his shadowing leaves at the walls
"What's going on in there?"
He listened for the scratch of my pen, the creak of my chair.
"Something new on your desk?"
Often I felt that he rejoiced with me
Over a freshly-coined rhyme or a well-built stanza.
And sometimes late at night, he tapped at my window:
"Go to sleep, fool,
Nothing will come of it anyway"
How amazing was the place where he began
From under iron gratings near a cellar stair
He had emerged, a delicate sapling with one bud as a cap
Humbly trembling in the wind
As if he were asking of the world
"May I?"--
He never grew at all in height.
Only in breadth, contrarily, a cripple right from birth.
Each year a new bough, a new deformity,
More branches--more monster;
Octopus-like, he bent and broke around him
Steel, stone and concrete,
Till he saw me through the window
And entrusted his life to me.
And after the iron he had overcome
There were so many monkey-quick climbing children.
So many hooks holding long lines of laundry,
So many carved names, dates and little hearts--
Albums of innocent young loves…
And now, when I look at the shattered whiteness of the broken trunk
With the saffron-yellow ring in the center
I can hardly remember that he ever bloomed at all.
I saw him in despair
When the blue silk of evening enfolded us both
In melancholy.
In white deep nights I would hear him sighing through the frost
"It goes badly for me, near one."
I saw him in a joyous mood
When April besprinkled him with life
Breathing upon him diamond bright warmth;
As I would open the window
He would blow in a breath
Of lilac sweetness from his heart's core,
"All for you, I have no one else."
I never even knew his taxonomic name
Or from what genus he came,
From which Gehenna, which oasis.
Eighteen years--just think--
Not only his
But a great portion of my life too,
With one thunderclap--null.
Today, I haven't wound my watch,
I skipped two meals
And never took the pipe from my mouth.
Yiddish
Audio in English
Audio in Yiddish
Commentary
A
Bull In The Snow
A bull slipped out of his stall one night
Into the white, moonlit world
He could go where he liked. He was free.
The gate closed with a scraping sound;
His ear twitched at the noise.
Was there someone about who might stop him?
No one? Then he could go-
Maybe he might even run?
He would go to the cow who had called to him.
What a voice she had--with a heartbeat in it
And something else--the flavor of the warm bran.
Just wait--it would all be worthwhile.
Snow falls steadily in a mysterious silence.
Snow upon snow--endlessly, ceaselessly
And tickles his flanks
As did long ago the broad motherly tongue
On his delicate calf's body.
Now the snow grows in height from below.
White hills slow his steps
A switch of the tail
A stamp of the mighty feet.
Each foot in a separate grave.
But it's strange--
He can't see the path.
There is only--nothing!
Not earth, not sky, not barn.
Only snow and clouds.
Low in the sky hangs a yellow moon.
The snow will pull it down,
It will fall on his head
Soft as a bale of hay.
He whips the snow with his tail--nothing!
His horns stand ready.
He'll pierce the enemy--where is it?
He shakes his head till it aches.
Even the little bell on his neck will not ring.
All wrapped in softness and white
He faces the Almighty head on.
Not a move.
Not forward, not backward.
Snow covers even the hot, sweaty buttocks,
Tops even the mane of hair.
The eyes shoot rage, fear and anguish.
The nose melts holes in the snow.
A last growling below:
Me-----------------e--------e----e-u-u-W!
He is completely covered.
Only the two ears stick out
Like two frozen doves.
Yiddish
Commentary
Autumnal
Reminder
Don't look out the window at night when it's raining,
There is such a sadness that can stream through the panes,
And there is such a truth-too strong to be grasped--
In autumn by the window at night when it rains.
As slow and pointed as an old man's sermon
Uncoils actuality in the steady gray light,
And your old heart which was stronger than iron,
Now longs for a woman and whisky this night.
But there is no such woman, and no such liquor.
Facts of time past speak so much clearer.
You're a battered top hot, a broken old cylinder,
That once was a king's, on the head of a beggar.
And the poor puzzled heart is still fluttering-
Lost in a distant phantasmagory;
While out there your life is lying in ruin
An imp laughs in the window--memento mori.
Your eye has more than once glittered with tears
And often your doom with a smile entertains.
But strange how helpless a man can become
In autumn by the window at night when it rains.
Yiddish
Autumn
Far, far distant from the moon,
And deeper than the sunken rain,
Is gone the spring,
Taking with it everything.
Now it is autumn in cool copper.
The ravages of autumn are full and deep;
Chill damp breath of gardens after rain
Slicing over bronzed meadow and hill.
Pale amber glittering on the bare trees--
Bemottled like bursting bubbles.
Completely gone is gleam of green;
The sweet rhythm of the insects.
Silenced-the broad forest melodies
Dead is the holy anthem.
The yellow moon meditating in the sky
Gazes sadly into the silver water.
Sorrow streams over the naked earth.
Lonely is the night.
You--my soul.
Yiddish
\
A
Wish
I see now that the end is near--
He has not left anyone off the list,
Only the guilty are released.
Is that hellfire that I hear?
God, is that your world's boundary?
I would fly there on antelope feet
Taking along only a bittersweet
Armload of fragments in my haste
--What is left of a profaned Decalogue:
The ancient psalms; some of Dostoevsky,
Van Gogh's blood-red light of day;
The weeping flute of Debussy
And a song of Moishe-Laib's--master poesie,
Already decaying into dirt.
Tossing away the key of my front door
As one throws a kiss to a beloved wife
Free and rich I'll depart from life.
Nor will I need to add to my adieu
That I never will miss any of you.
Yiddish
The
Silver On The Roof
The man who visits often in my home, coming right in
Like a winter wind, and greets me as "Herr Poh-ett",--
Has found out that I don't know Latin,
And that I don't always grasp what he's said.
My visitor resembles the solitary one of Amsterdam*
That certain "noble" branch of my own stem,
(He is lily-pale as if he lung-disease had fought),
And though I cherish and love the light of a thought…
When my visitor politely said that he was sorry that I clung
To Yiddish--"an impoverished tongue"--and offered proof,
I looked at him as one would look at dung,
And at the deep silver sparkling on the winter roof.
And while he was praising a poem of mine
Comparing it to Pope's "Essay on Man,"
I was thinking how good is the cut, and how fine
That the hate in my eyes was so easy to scan.
* Spinoza who was excommunicated by the Jewish
community of Amsterdam
Yiddish
In
Temple
White gleams the East wall
And in the center shines the seven-armed Menorah;
Seven cool spheres shoot fiery remembrances
Of pastoral glories.
Incandescence pierces every dark temple corner.
Light shrieks, light tears every quiet dream filament.
Deep organ-shudder trembles on the cold-polished marble.
The oil-smooth song of the white-clad women's choir rises softly to the
ceiling,
And hovers like a weary butterfly over a dying fire.
There is the fragrance of violets in the autumnal
weather.
Elegant tango dancers magnetically gesture.
But from the carved columns hang the ruins of my Holy Day
Lost in the glistening creamy patterns.
Dark, melancholy eyes have worshippers
But their prayer are alien and lacking in sorrow.
Theatrically the cantor postures on the platform
Speaking eloquently about the "stiff-necked people," Yisroel,
Tremolos with oratorical voice and manicured finger:
"Fear not, O faithful servant. Jacob."
Black-frock-coated pseudo-Marranoes sit silent
in satin
With wife, child, bank books and curiosity
As if watching a bareback circus equestrienne
Throwing kisses and danger to the onlookers.
(Earlier, in their rich and cheerless homes,
They gave polite commands to the servants--
Proud black script on dazzling white cards
To be fastened to doors of offices and stores:
"Holiday. Closed till 6 PM today.")
On the Holy Ark stand two golden lions
With open jaws, their extended claws pointing to the "I Am."
Rest well, oh guardians; there is nothing left to guard.
Behind the Holy Curtain sounds only a deadly song,
And God sleeps in thick cubes of gold,
A sleep from which he will never awake.
Yiddish
Even
The Last Flower Withers
To Becky (1922)
Under wet, heavy copper weep the trees,
In a delicate swoon bends the grass,
The rain has drenched the heart of the earth.
It is autumn, and I remind you, beloved,
That I hold the glowing light of my spirit
Ready for you, beautiful, dear one.
My light is fading.
Dust am I without you.
I wither in the darkness.
I am autumn sick.
Lighter of stars, bring me your healing potion--
I die of longing.
Leaden sky, fall on my head.
Why does one need a heart?
Yiddish
And
Even The Butterfly
And even the butterfly--
Which is carefree
It seems to me--
Even he
Will tell you
That life is never easy.
Live an hour, or to eighty,
It's all mixup and suffering.
Easier by far is his last fluttering;
In that moment
Of reaching eternal content--
He seeks not even a grass pillow for his head
As a heavy raindrop strikes him dead.
Yiddish
Caprice
I will put on my newest clothes,
And tame my wild shock of hair
And if I can find one, who knows,
A cane may give the right air.
Then I'll go and look for landscapes and views
Exactly like Heine's and Milton's muse
Provided for them. How I long
To compose a nature song
In true celebration of her allure,
No longer to be the "Laureate of the Poor,"
Without sparkling gems, cooing doves,
Or spring flowers. But the one God above
Knows that everything I set down
Is drawn from a frosted windowpane.
What the poet finds in his heart
Is the only subject of his art.
Yiddish
Destiny
From no exalted lineage have I come,
And with exalted ones I refuse to go.
So when the final call will come,
I will be with those I know.
With the frightened and the mute,
With those condemned to die,
Imploring eyes wide open
Their sadness soaring to the sky.
Then take our blood and pour it out--
Into the cold, cold earth it goes.
Blood with seed-grain stir about
And a wonder-harvest grows.
Thus always will the earth awake,
And they who thus our blood consume
Must then a blessing also make
For us who proudly helped it bloom.
Yiddish
Ballad
Of An Outsider's Life
Life came and rapped upon my door
Not knowing whom he was looking for.
But when he spoke his tone was dire:
--Lives he here who was afire?
--Was afire? And if yes, what then?
--If yes, my friend, I must ask you when
You'll pay what's due for time gone by.
--Oh my rich, beloved life--I cannot lie.
I have nothing left to give you back.
True, of good things there was no lack.
Though I guarded them--they wore out.
Life clapped, and there was a thundercrack.
--"Plead not; my partner with the almanac
Demands: it's time, it's time you paid your fare."
And then he was not there.
Since then I've walked with measured tread
Knowing not where my steps have led.
Smoothing the dust of earlier days,
Avoiding women and the marketplace.
And what I see, and what I hear
Wells from deep within the sphere.
And somewhere there is a joy and light,
But around me only a grimmer plight
And also love--but more of hate--
And on that, too, my payments late.
Yiddish
Nobody
Is The Victor
Sing not to God through Psalms--
Your own text discover
Raw as a wound and thin as wind;
You will see God through a film of tears--
No one ever sees him clearly.
A sign that you will be heard--
You will kiss the earth;
And you'll become light as a myrtle-bough
And carefree as a man about town,
And love will grow like fruit on the trees,
And you'll be rich--a secret millionaire.
But till they will carry you to the holy place
You must always remember--
"Never again to bring that foolish word--
Victory--to your lips."
Yiddish
Melancholia
On A Sunday Evening
So much have I anguished during my life
Over my doubly-dark I-fate and tribe-fate,
That I can allow myself to laugh
At my "congenial" neighbor,
That half-knower,
Who tries to re-make me
With Zoroastrian theology.
Bringing his little book of Yoga, he comes.
Giving no sign of what he has in mind.
Slowly the wheels begin to grind
And his zeal to pound the drums.
Already I can see: a deep grave stands ready
For my mimosa-delicate Sunday evening mood.
The start--foul breath delivers a first cannonade
(Victims have the least to say)
Then a dull army of words on parade:
"One must look into this little book
With a pure heart and wonder-seeking eyes
As did our grandmothers with their Tseneh-Ureneh*
Only then will you truly understand
What is God and what is Man,
What is brother-sun and sister-moon…
Ay the little book, the little book."
I say nothing--but I'm primed as one about to
sneeze.
Seeing this he's silent for just an instant as when a gun misfires--
But then full speed ahead!
At last I say: "My dear neighbor,
Please don't be angry,
But I would like to ask you
Where is your proof--may I know?
After Francis of Assisi,
The Koran and the Bible,
Did they still slaughter Jews?
And if they could read the Yogi
Would onions smell like orchids?
Will bald headed men grow new hair?
And tigers and hyenas--will cotton be their fare?"
He pushes away the tea,
Buttons up his coat
And marches off;
He has, says he, no more to say than me.
*Tseneh-Ureneh: the so-called "Women's bible." A Yiddish
version of the Pentateuch done in morality fable style.
Yiddish
Homo
Novus
He will come from a distant place-
A dark-skinned Homo Novus
Bearing a spark of our ancestry
But without beard and oratory.
And in fewest, clearest words--
Lightning script on evening sky
For all to read who have an eye,
He will say:
"I am not sent by God to be your leader,
I come from the last scorched sanctuary
Of all who have lost heavily."
Fighting a sob as he speaks,
Biting his lip till it bleeds.
"Be warned," he will thunder--
"We must begin anew,
We must not lose,
Let us play seriously, with the fluency
Of children in the nursery,
For just one chance is left to us
And the cards are poor."
And what he will not clearly say,
The wind will through the world convey.
And for him they will spend their lives
Speaking the highest superlatives
To honor his name.
Everywhere they will spread his fame.
All will praise and praise him
If it should come to pass that he can
Bring to an end what Isaiah began.
Finale
Half-past eleven,
The curtain falls--
A bright blade severs outstretched necks;
A thousand eyes extinguished;
Colors run, sounds tremble in fading away.
Awakened rattlesnakes hiss.
Tucked in, cheated children
Are too ashamed to cry.
Yiddish
Before
The Apples Fall
Before the apples start to pummel the ground
And before the pine trees shed their cones
And the cold whistling winds begin--
Provide yourself with a small book of poems.
Bitter is he who is naked and hungry in the winter.
Bitter is he who sings no songs
In the long, cold winter.
Yiddish
The
Simple Word
I love the simple word
That weights the pen,
Whose taste is sharp and tart
And shows its origin.
I knead it out like dough,
Forge it straight and strong,
Guard it like an eye;
A diamond for a song.
The
Bite Of Conscience
Fearsome hour of remorse--
How stern is your coming.
Marble walls of palaces,
Iron bars of dungeons,
You break through them all.
You bring back what must not be remembered,
And becloud all that had given hope
Till grief grows high and rigid as the mountains.
And what are tears,
And what are pleas,
Against the mouth of conscience
Which bites like a cobra,
Till you kiss the enemy
And embrace the foe.
The soul, like a feather, all white,
Struggles, flutters,
And falls into the arms of God.
Yiddish
Why
Do You Need Him?
Please don't embarrass Tevye, that neighbor of mine
And don't ask him to come to your party!
He's honest enough, but his pants have a shine,
A tactless fellow, and he's never been hearty.
So do you really need him?
His coat is old, his nails--see how black!
And he's just gotten up from a sickbed.
He can't carry a tune, his dancing is slack,
And deal the cards--it's as if he were dead.
So do you really need him?
Since first I knew him, a good many years,
He's preferred to lie buried and live like a mole.
And then all of a sudden his true self appears
And he shouts that he hates us and the town as a whole.
So do you really need him?
He's not such a fool as at first you might think.
He'll sit there so quiet and then with a laugh
He'll say to you something that carries a sting…
And then when you look--why, he's cut you in half.
So do you really need him?
Now, he isn't all bad--only ask and he'll give
You the food from his plate--and not listen to thanks.
But like a volcano his rage comes alive
When he hears the cant of a sycophant!
So do you really need him?
But most of all, let me give you this warning-
Don't prate of your wisdom or philanthropies.
If you do he'll storm till next morning
Or commit some other breach of the peace.
So do you really need him?
Yiddish
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