translated from the Yiddish by Mildred Faintly
Blue Violin
My dream’s like the sound of a violin,
a song that explains the color blue,
me and you, such a vision,
no one knows and no one knew.
Butterflies fluttering
all in a ring,
strange blue words
that a violin sings;
you’re my repose,
I’m night for you,
a violin played
in the key of blue.
Ur-Murderess Night
Ur-murderess, Night,
black mother of the desperate,
help me!
Lure and trap him
like an animal in a net,
consume him, beat him down till he’s dead.
As for me,
I’ve learned well the taste of my tears
I’ve eaten humiliation like bread,
and now I’ll learn to drink myself unconscious,
to drink long and greedily,
as one listens to a love song,
to drink in the sound
of his wife’s cries and his children’s silence,
the angry muttering of his friends
as his remains are removed.
I will stand up like someone suddenly recovered
from long illness,
like a black ghost in the red dawn light,
I will bow to all four quarters of space
and sing, and sing
and sing in the face of life
the praises of death.
The golden peacock’s flown . . .
The golden peacock’s flown.
Night opened its eyes, like two moons,
they glowed like a cat’s, like two night-shining suns.
Sleep, sleep, my radiant one.
With yellow cat’s eyes was the night looking on.
I touched you asleep and, unconscious, you moaned.
The fiddle unknowingly sang to the bow.
Sleep, sleep, my beloved, troubled one.
You were the fiddle and I held the bow,
my arm was your cradle, and time became new,
our play became music; one music, we two.
Remember how tenderly. Soon,
after happiness sheltered us under its wings—
a fairy-tale peacock, impossible thing,—
a happiness we couldn’t really have known—
that peacock of gold, it is flown now and gone,
my sad one, sleep on, sleep on.
Slender ships . . .
Slender ships drowse,
rocked by the gentle green swell of water;
shadows sleep in its depths,
in the cold heart of the bay.
The winds are still.
Clouds glide ghost-silent across night sky.
Dim, colorless and calm, the earth waits
for the flash and then the thunder.
So do I.