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Pisherl woke up. He was delighted when, on coming into the workroom, he discovered I was there. He ran up and embraced me as if we hadn’t seen each other in years…
An infinite weariness comes into the faces of the old tenements,
As they stand massed together on the block,
Tall and thoughtful silent,
In the enveloping twilight.
Pensively,
They eye each other…
We’re striding in your front ranks,
marching mankind—
with the cool and with the fervid,
with the proud and the courageous—
step after step!
On his high gibbet, the old god
swings and swings.
Patched…
Lately, there’s no trace left
Of Yankl, son of Yitskhok,
But for a tiny round dot
That rolls crazily through the streets
With hooked-on, clumsy limbs.
The lord-above surrounded
The whole world with…
An old Jew asked me near the Jaffa Gate:
“Is the Saxon Garden still there? The same as ever?
Is there a fountain? At the entrance from Czysta Street
In the old days confectioners had a shop there…
Russia! If my faith in you were any less great
I might have said something different.
I might have complained: You have led us astray,
And seduced us young wandering gypsies.
Precious to us is each…
I saw my father drowning
In surging days.
His weak hand gave a last white flutter
In the distance—
And he was gone.
I kept on alone
Along the shore,
A boy still,
With small, thin legs,
And have…
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…
Man has separated lust and sorrow.
But God holds them together like day and night.
I know lust. I know intense suffering.
I praise God’s one name.
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
A Jewish Wedding
Deep in fields the klezmers can be heard
Driving horses foaming at the mouth,
Relatives, both poor and rich, arrive
To Reb Sane’s daughter’s wedding feast. [ . . . ]
But from a…