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A Jewish musiker,
Alex Herzovitch,
wound his Schubert around and around
like diamonds.
Morning to night, happy, oh happy,
he ground out that same old
sonata, ground it by rote, ground it
to a…
My steps are set down stiffly
on tired, empty paths.
This morning a little town of Jews
called me “Anti-Semite!”
All of them in wrinkles and in rags
out there pointing at me:
“Him! That guy! We…
The death of an artist is never a random event, but a last act of creation that seems to illuminate the whole of his life under a powerful ray of light. [ . . . ] Why are people surprised when poets…
Lasik’s downfall did not come because of his name. It was only because of that sigh. Perhaps it was not even the sigh, but rather the economic situation, or the hot weather, or perhaps even certain…
The Russian Revolution initially encouraged a flowering of Jewish cultural activity, lifting restrictions on Jewish publishing. Jewish theater companies experimented with modernist approaches to stage…
A shady incident took place in Moscow a few days before Easter. At noon, in the center of town, they seized an old Jew, poor and wretched, who was carrying a burlap sack on his back and in it the…
Jewish graveyard near Leningrad.
Crooked fence of rotten plywood.
Behind the fence lie side by side
lawyers, merchants, musicians, and revolutionaries.
For themselves they were singing.
For…
I have studied the science of leaving
in night’s unbraided sorrows.
Oxen ruminate—the waiting lingers to the final
hour of the city’s vigil—and I honor rituals
from that other night—the rooster…
Three Idlers [finish chanting]:Why, oh why,Did the soul descendFrom the highest heightTo the deepest end?The greatest fallContains the upward flight.[A long pause. All three sit motionless, lost in…
Pass on, pass on, you lonely grandfathers,
With frightened beards covered with snow,
In the last sorrow, in the final grief
You’re still here, the final witnesses.
Pass on, pass on, you lonely…