Classic Poem

— An Old Jew . There we were throughout Poland,
a Jew or two in each hamlet, a dozen in each village,
and a thousand or so in every town—
who knows how many thousands and tens of thousands—
going about in the dust of summer
or against the cold wind with noses deep in our collars,
hands pushed into our sleeves,
selling and buying—
this lord's cow and that lord's sack of wheat,
scheming as hard to earn our bread
as a minister might to rule a kingdom,
when, crash!
as a dish slips from a woman's hands
and lies in pieces on the ground,
our bustling ended,
and we were scurrying from the Cossacks
straight for the towns—
their bands trotting along the roads,
booty hanging about their saddles,
lances tall as the chimneys;
many a Jew and Pole were skewered together
on those lances, or hanged
side by side with a pig between them—
boughs were heavy with that harvest;
and still the Cossacks came
breeding in the plunder,
until cannon no longer stopped them,
and gates of towns could not keep them out—
Kiev was taken;
the dead along highway and byway,
pools of blood in streets and houses
drew the troops of them on their swift horses out of the steppes,
many and as pitiless as insects.
— A Young Jew . How tiresome these old stories are—
Assyrians and Syrians,
now Germans and now the Cossacks;
how the Cossacks plundered and killed the Jews of Poland
or that the glory of the Jews in Spain
was muddied
as sunshine on a pool by cattle.
Tell us of the Jews along the Rhine
before the crusades; before the Inquisition,
upon the plains from which the snowy Pyrenees are seen;
tell us of our glory in Babylon,
of our glory in Egypt,
that we who in the alleys and the byways
of these Polish cities
have only synagogues of wood,
who in the fairs and market-places sweat or freeze beside our booths and wagons
from dawn to darkness,
may hide that splendor
in our hearts.
— The Old Jew . As soldiers in their drill
charge and beat back the charge
of a foe they may never meet,
so we strengthen ourselves
in struggling with our fathers' foes, long harmless
and merely the people of our thoughts—
but some day ready again to act in flesh and blood,
surely as a hard winter brings the wolves howling
along the forest roads and even to the streets.
— Another Jew . These are the pools
where the market-place is sunken,
but the ground is wet
and the rain is falling everywhere.
The wind is blowing in every street—
only banging a shutter
or whirling up dust
in a corner;
but it will blow a storm again.
Unravel this world
with your nervous fingers
and reweave the knotted thread
on the loom of the Talmud;
sort the dirty rags of the world,
buyers of old clothes, ragpickers;
gather the bits
and refine it in the fire of the Torah,
buyers of bottles and rusty metal,
dealers in junk;
peddlers and keepers of stands and booths,
and even you who have stores on streets,
you great merchants who buy flax in Russia
and ship furs to Germany,
I have heard it said there is no goods like the Talmud,
no goods like the Torah.
The sun was heavy on my head,
the earth was hot beneath my shoes
in the alley
that led to other alleys
and other alleys,
but I stepped into the garden,
into the cool palace of the Torah.
— A Young Jew . You look at the world through printed pages—
dirty panes of glass;
and even if the pages are the Talmud
and those who have written wrote with diamonds,
the more they scratched, less clearly we can see.
I see neither rag nor bark,
flesh nor leaf,
I feel neither sticks nor stones,
cloth nor pillow,
neither rain nor snow nor wind nor sunshine;
I see God only and my spirit brightens
like a mirror;
I touch Him touching all I touch;
on earth I am as close to Him as those in Heaven.
Could I teach myself to want nothing,
nothing could be taken from me;
I should be unafraid of today or tomorrow,
and live in eternity like God.
Cold and hunger, pain and grief
do not last,
are mortal like myself;
only the joy in God has no end—
this it is that in the wind
showers the petals upon the grass,
whirls up the glistening snow,
or sweeps the dust along the streets before the storm;
it shines into me
as the sun upon a tree in winter
after rain.
Light becomes colors,
colors
light and shadows—
dusk and dawn;
tasting God in the salt water
and the sweet rain,
I sink and my feet have nothing to rest on,
I rise and my hands find nothing to hold,
and am carried slowly,
now swiftly,
towards night and towards noon.