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I slept with a murderer every night of my life for two years. The murderer is dead now. He died some weeks ago in Chicago. That is why I am free to tell the tale.
I was a small boy at that time. I…
My day—
Is punctured like a sieve,
And ridiculed like a whim.
May winter whiteness blossom,
May autumns turn gray,
May summers whistle—
Become nightingales.
When a rye-wind
Would have twisted my…
Some sort of strange, humid day. . . . Some sort of day with a ragged sun and low, dark clouds, like threads of smoke, already happened once before in the past: in distant years long ago, when our…
If Tarshish would hand out its gold and diamonds
And the deep waters a jacinth, an agate, and an amethyst
What does it have to do with me? And why should I ask for it?
While I am alive I will not be…
Mordecai walked home from the village on the path that bordered the forest. All the talk of the elders in the village chief’s house had intoxicated him more than the strongest whiskey. Under his…
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…
Household of eight.
Beds are two.
When it gets late,
What do they do?
Three with father,
Three with mother:
Limbs
Over each other.
When it’s night
And they go to bed,
Mother begins
To wish she…
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…
Aged woolen women, like old siddurim—moldy, mossy
Bound in coarse canvas;
Pointless bellies dangling after them like empty sacks,
Dried-out breasts, like horseradish roots, swaying back and forth.…
The only garden left in our walled-up town was the old cemetery, whose earliest graves dated back to the thirteenth century. It was densely overgrown. Picking one’s way to its remoter corners meant…