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(Written at the end of 1939 in Havana—with thoughts about Poland)
Our poor nest eternally atremble
in the wind.
What will happen now, in bloody storm,
mayn kind?
Now, in bloody storm . . . ?
The…
When the [Yiddish language] culture conference gathered in Czernowitz [in September, 1908], I was against it. When the culture conference gathered in Berlin, I voiced my doubts about it. Now that a…
We take Jewish secular culture here in its modern shape, its language form, Yiddish. It is not the first expression of worldly or secular Jewish culture. In ancient times almost the entire cultural…
It’s one in the morning. I’m writing this poem
in a train station.
What does poetry have to do with trains?
I came here unexpectedly
traveling the wrong way.
Telling the story is risky:
I was…
On the white garments of my great-grandfather
the cross of the middle ages flames anew.
My great-grandfather sits at the seder,
holding a staff from a wild almond tree
to rouse the forefathers.
Not…
It’s hard to be clever these nights,
And useless to be modern.
Useless to smile knowingly and observe with melancholy
The language bastardisms of history:
“The government of the Republic is delivered…
With regard to the life and fate of the remaining Jews, located at present in the Occupation Zones of Germany, you hear at every step the words: “sheyres hapleyte” [saving remnant], “sheyres hakhurbn”…
Literature cannot survive, cannot develop freely and expansively, if it depends on an underdeveloped reader, if it satisfies the spiritual-aesthetic needs only of those who have no access to the…
To be or not to be—that’s not the question.
Sense or nonsense—that’s my obsession.
For too long, Divine reckoning
has shredded human thinking.
The sum total of justice is a round number:
bright…