The Pilgrim from the East

Gustave Kahn

1895

He was home from the East, this pilgrim.
He had left to seek a perfumed flower
that Solomon, whose hands grew dark
from constant prayers for beauty,
had planted in the gardens of En Gedi,
fashioned on Abishag’s beauty
and the charms that arrayed her.
He left with his staff and his cloak,
he slept alongside flowing rivers
that, under oleanders and over white stones,
imagine arabesques of silver skimmers.
Then, as the mosques were suffering
under saber-wielding Janissaries,
he turned, a melancholy man, toward home.
He rested his staff against the hearth,
the staff of his long pilgrimage,
then watched the soft eyes he loved,
turning to face him, catch fire.
His staff became a perfumed stalk
where the lily he’d not found now bloomed.
Good pilgrim, returned from the East,
happiness resides in your home,
not on the roads with their ambuscades;
the world is just a masquerade
beside the soft sweet smile
abiding in your home.

Translated by
Michele McKay
Aynesworth
.

Credits

Gustave Kahn, “C’est un pelerin qui revient de l’orient” [The Pilgrim from the East], from Domaine de fée (Paris: Société Nouvelle, 1895), pp. 37–38.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Gustave Kahn

1859–1936

The symbolist poet and literary critic Gustave Kahn was born in Metz but moved to Paris with his family when Germany annexed Lorraine in 1870. Kahn was a contributor to many literary reviews and in the interwar years wrote weekly columns for daily newspapers. From 1932 until his death, Kahn edited the French Zionist journal Menorah. One of the first French poets to write free verse, he was also an avid advocate and defender of the new literary style. The Dreyfus Affair made Kahn more conscious of his Jewish background, as did the mounting antisemitism of the 1930s, and although he was distant from communal affairs, he became an active supporter of Zionism.

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