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A visitor came to the shtetl,
A stranger, with unrest in his step . . .
No-one recognized his unrest. No-one asked him:
“Stranger, are you weary?”
Across the blue sky the evening drew its curtain…
You will come back.
You will, with God’s help, come back
With a far-off, alien look.
(I’m preparing myself,
I already know,
I’ve seen how they come back.)
You will sit in your regular chair, unsure
A…
How long this staring through a window
In an alley-way by few remembered,
Into the obscure, into a room
Empty of all but its walls
Where pictures hang all in shadow
But for one of mild eyes wide,
As…
Without Jews, no Jewish God.
If, God forbid, we should quit
this world, Your poor tent’s light
would out.
Abraham knew You in a cloud:
since then, You are the flame
of our face, the rays
our eyes…
Everything will remember
That I was here.
The ships will be the color
Of my clothing,
The birds will use my voice for singing,
The fisherman on the rock
Will ponder my poem,
The river
Will follow my…
I always thought
I had been here before.
Each year of my patched-up life
I mended the fabrics
of my decrepit, tattered world.
In memory I recognized faces and smiles,
even my father and mother…
How and with what will you fill
Your cup on the day you’re free?
Will you in your joy still
Hear the scream of the past
Where the skulls of chained days
Clot in bottomless pits?
Searching…
Oh, Father of great mercy
In sunset’s flame there fades
My cradle land
That was once nearer to me than my salt-crusted shirt
Where with my brother Russian
I shared more than once
A measly bite of…
The towering life of the towering city
Is burning in white fires.
And in the streets of the Jewish East side
The whiteness of the fires burns even whiter.
I like to stroll in the burning frenzy of…