translated from the Yiddish by Mildred Faintly
A Veil
Sometimes, it’s like I’m wearing a veil,
I’m here and not here,
veiled off and veiled in,
and my steps synchronize with yours,
invisible passers-by.
I feel it again,
warm as blood, defiant as a flower,
the madness of my springtime.
Across roads roaring with traffic
I carry you with me, carefully
as if I my too-full heart could spill.
I carry your voices, your smiles,
even your grimaces,
as one does a remembered song,
with soundless, barely moving lips,
as you turn on your finger, to be sure it’s still there,
a precious ring.
Words to engrave . . .
Words to engrave in marble,
to inlay with gold—
that’s never what I went for.
In fact, these poems aren’t what I had in mind.
What I wanted was as different from these
as fire, or joyous storms in August,
to unexpectedly tear off
the faded outer forms of reality, impulsively
as wind ripping laundry from a clothesline.
Too late.
And I wanted to be different with people,
though even now I’m not ready
to endorse family ties,
or even parenthood.
But if I could have forgiven myself
for my tortured life,
could have gone up to this one, to that one,
those who were rotten, those who were noble,
the ones on fire with dreams,
those who lost their world,
those who squandered someone else’s,
and said to them, “I yield myself to you,
I’m giving myself away, like a saint in a legend,
my rich, my glorious goodness
will overwhelm you—
Too late.
Often I think I hear footsteps behind me
when no one’s there,
and often I think I should end it all,
find the exit.
And I swear
by Else Lasker-Schüler,
by Rilke and by Baudelaire,
that I’d rather say nothing than whine.
I’ll endure a failing body’s ultimate indignities
bravely. Maybe in my last hour I’ll dream,
ascend, tremendous,
see the planets turning on their axes,
dawn reddening over fields still asleep,
in their blankets of mist,
see my sad child kneel down
in the midst of a glad, prosperous village,
to watch me, a distant figure in the sky.
I’ll shrug my still beautiful shoulders,
try to keep from crying, force my trembling lips
to smile, succeed,
with a little desperate intake of breath
at such effort, but smile I will
in the face of heaven,
making brave show—
as a condemned man might exhale
the smoke of his last cigarette—
against God’s colossal impassive mask.
Mildred Faintly’s translation of Lower East Suicide is now available in our bookstore here.