Yahweh's servants! Praise praise the name of Yahweh. Blessed be the name of Yahweh now and evermore From the source of dawn to the seat of sundown praised be Yahweh's name. High over all nations, Yahweh; and over the heavens His glory Who is there like Yahweh our God throned on high, Looking below on heavens and earth? Raiser of paupers from dust, from dungheaps lifting the needy, to seat him with princes, the princes of his people, and seating the barren woman at home a mother of sons in joy.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation:
(I must say, trying to follow the Talmudic prescriptions for the reading of Hallel psalms in the early synagogue made things a bit long-winded in this one with all the responsory Halaluyahs after every half-verse. I figured I'd alternate them with upward and downward motifs. That way, highlighting the structure of the verse-line, they at least have a job to do.)
The audio recording for this is a little different from my usual Tiberian Hebrew recordings. See the note below for more. Psalm 117
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Praise Yahweh, nations all Salute Him, peoples all For His kindness prevails upon us and Yahweh's truth is forever. Praise the Lord.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation:
A friend pointed out to me — in connection with the reading of this and other Hallel psalms — that the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and, in a more oblique way, the Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us as to the specifics of communal participation in the chanting of the hallel psalms in the early synagogue. Specifically, they state that it was done with the first helf-verse as a call-response, then with the rest as a responsory with הללויה. I am uncertain as to whether the song-final instance of הללויה in the actual text is to be treated as its own half-verse for these purposes (and thus get a responsory הללויה before and after it) or if the reader is to read the whole påsūq up to הללויה on his own uninterrupted, and then be answered by a final הללויה in response. I figure the former, more orthopractically fastidious reading would be likely to crop up anyhow no matter what so I went with that. The practice is I understand not common today, but the inference I take (given that not only the Talmuds attest this, but Rambam endorses it) is that people living in the Land of Israel during the Masoretic period — the actual user-base of the Tiberian reading tradition — would likely have chanted the hallel psalms in this fasion. So I figured, why not incorporate that into my Tiberian reading of this psalm? It's a simple matter of recording on multiple tracks and rhythmicizing the cantillation in a way proper to psalmodic delivery. On hearing the result, a certain person, who shall remain anonymous, remarked "wow, that sounds so Christian". Make of that what you will. To me, fact that I managed to produce something Christian-sounding simply by following directives from Rambam and the Sages of the Talmud, is absolutely hysterical. The Original:
"Happy the Man"
Psalm 1
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Happy the man who has not walked as the wicked counsel nor sat in scoffers' sessions nor stood the wrongers' way. But makes Yahweh's teaching his desire and murmurs His teaching night and day. He is to be as a tree planted by water streams that bears its fruit in season with never-withering leaf, and thrive in every thing he does. Not so the ungodly wicked, but like chaff wind whips away. So no the wicked shall not stand in judgment, nor wrongers with the righteous host. For Yahweh grasps the way of the righteous and the wicked's way is lost.
Audio recording of the original text chanted in Tiberian Hebrew:
(Note for people who haven't read Dune: this is just me screwing around)
Discovered unvocalized in a Qumran fragment. A vocalized version was found palimpsested in Aharon Ben Asher's recipe book.
Audio recording of the "original" text chanted in Tiberian Hebrew:
Prayer of the Sons of Gesserit
Translated by A.Z. Foreman A prayer of the Sons of Gesserit at a time of trouble. I must not fear. For fear is the mind's murderer. Fear is the little death that turns To end my life over and over. Without fear, I will die only once. The Original:
This may or may not be a very old text, but I think it is. As befits an old text, there are points of obscurity. Scholarly opinion is much divided as to what exactly it is: a taunt-song celebrating an Israelite victory over Sihon, an ancient Amorite victory-song celebrating Sihon's victory over Moab, an Israelite victory song celebrating the conquest of Moab, or a taunt-song referring to the defeat of Moab by some non-Israelite enemy. The great uncertainty is a function of the obscurity of several components of the last verse, where a text that ceased to be intelligible spawned multiple different attempts to make sense of it. As far as the redactor of the prose text is concerned, it celebrates an Amorite victory over Moab. Its purpose in the Book of Numbers does not seem mysterious. Heshbon was a great Amorite city, apparently famous in song for how its king wrested land from the Moabites. For the Israelites to be written into the story as a people that did to Sihon what he did to Moab magnifies their stature, and de-fangs the song of Sihon's accomplishments into mere prelude to his downfall. At some point before the close of the Masoretic period, this ceased to be understood, resulting in a revocalization of the key word ונירם as if it were a verb and messing up the rhythm.
If it is an adaptation into Judean Canaanite of a passage from what was once a well-known Amorite epic, it may be counted the first known instance of literary translation in Jewish history. Then again, I'm not quite sure the party that sutured this passage into the Book of Numbers even conceived of Amorite and Judean as entitely different languages from each other. It's tempting, but probably pointless, to ask how different might the "real" original have been. Perhaps enormously, and perhaps not very.
At verse 28 I emend בלעה for בעלי per the LXX and follow a version of Hanson's reconstruction in this and much else including the ending. At 17 the MT's parsing of the opening of the poetic passage is screwy. The Masoretic accents make perfectly good sense as is (something like "Come to Heshbon! Let the city of Sihon be built and stand firm.") But poetically it seems like it would work better to shift the ʔaṯnåḥ over to תבנה. (This would require making באו חשבון a level 2 conjunctive-disjunctive unit, and letting ותכונן stand as an unbound disjunctive.) So hypothetically, I think: בֹּ֥אוּ חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן תִּבָּנֶ֑ה וְתִכּוֹנֵ֖ן עִ֥יר סִיחֽוֹן׃. This gives a neater syntactic balance, and the two clauses stand in chiastic relationship to each other. Perhaps the habit of joining תיבנה ותיכנה (as e.g. when mentioning Jerusalem among some Mizrahim, as a friend informs me) gave the Masoretes a sense — at a late date — that those two verbs had to stand as a single conjunctive-disjunctive phrase.
I have translated the text according to this hypothetical reconstruction of the original parsing, and with heavy emendation. But in my recording, I have allowed the Masoretic text to stand as is. This is because, when I do Tiberian readings to accompany my translations of Biblical verse, my principle is to let the MT stand in the audio reading without emendation of any kind— no matter how obviously garbled a given word or passage may be. The Tiberian reading is a descendant of, and liturgical heir to, the "proto-Masoretic" reading tradition cultivated in priestly circles of the Second Temple. Particular effort was expended to stabilize and preserve it in the Middle Ages (obviously, without success). Tiberian Hebrew being the most direct heir to the priestly reading of the temple, it seems proper for a reading in it to respect the Masoretic text with all its quirks and wrinkles.
I've translated the poetic passage into a slightly loose accentual alliterative meter of the kind known from early Germanic.
Audio recording of the original text read in Tiberian Hebrew:
The Song of Heshbon: The Amorites' Defeat of Moab
Numbers 21:26-30
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Heshbon is the city of Sihon, king of the Amorites. He had battled the first king of Moab and wrested all the land from him as far as the Arnon. So the tale-singers tell it:
Come to Heshbon be it built high Let the city of Sihon stand unshaken. A fire has burst forth from Heshbon, A flame from the town of towering Sihon. It consumed all of Ar in Moab, swallowed whole the heights of Arnon. Woe is you wallowing Moab. People of Chemosh your kind is done. He has turned his sons to sorry refugees surrendered his daughters as slaves to a king to the Amorite sire, to King Sihon. Their yoke is done from Heshbon to Dibon. Chemosh annulled from Nofah to Medba.
An ancient Gothic war-prayer that Fritigern had his men recite before doing battle with the Romans.
Well, it was either the Goths or the Bene Gesserit. Can't quite remember which.
Gothic Litany Against Fear
"Translated" by A.Z. Foreman
I shall not fear for fear is minddoom. Fear is the spirit-slayer and vile smalldeath that ceaselessly slays and knifes up the soul. Fear is everdeath that obliterates for a lifetime. But fearless I die simply of a sudden. Yea, fearless I perish in a prick of time. Come Tiw lead me on a day of Tiw while war is vaulting in the veins of men. My blood bless you: embolden my bonehouse against the cloud of swords across the earth. I shall not fear. See fully, my eyes.
Nī skal ik ōgan ist auk agis munaqisteins agis ist ahamaurþrja jah sa armadauþilō saei afslahiþ sinteinō ufuhsneiþiþ saiwalai ist ja agis ajukdauþus saei aldai fraqisteiþ akei unags diwa ik ainafalþaba anaks jai unags swalt ik in stika mēlis Hiri Teiw mik tiuh Teiwis dagis miþþanei wagjiþ weigs in wairēþrōm þuk blōtai mein blōþ mein bainhūs bibalþei ana mēkeis milhman ufar midjungard Ni skal ik ōgan. Augōna, gasaiƕats.
The dating of the Song of the Sea is a matter of some dispute. There is a widely held view that it is extremely old, on linguistic grounds. Indeed, the language of this song is more consistently archaic than any other coherent long passage of the Hebrew Bible. There is nonetheless a robust tradition of positing a relatively late (i.e. post-exilic) date for the Exodus 15. These all hinge on an ability to discount the archaisms as being intentional, the result of a late composer's (apparently uniquely successful) attempt to compose in an old style rather than an early composer using the language as it existed at the time.
The tendency for poetic language to tend toward, or preserve, archaic language more than prose does (e.g. Latin and Greek at every period, Old English, 18th Century English, French, Modern Welsh, Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Dutch, etc.) is so robustly attested cross-linguistically that it can be taken for granted as a commonplace of human linguistic behavior. Elaborations of this staggeringly banal fact have been used on the regular to try and argue a late date for all manner of apparently archaic compositions, and Exodus 15 is among their number, the most extensive case (and, for me, by far the most irritating) being the decades-long attempt of literary historians to argue for a late text of Beowulf.
Of course, there also exists the opposite tendency: arguing an early date for a text which on linguistic grounds cannot belong to that period. This involves claims that the text got partly modernized in transmission. There is general consensus on this matter regarding a lot of Old Irish poetry. Another Celtic case in point is the scholarship surrounding Y Gododdin, a Welsh poem which survives in a 13 century manuscript but is traditionally attributed to the 6th century Brythonic poet Aneirin. (Well, he is traditionally called a Welsh poet, but his stomping ground would actually lie in what is today Scotland.) The idea in this case is that the material was heavily modernized in transmission, leaving only portions of earlier language intact.
Literary attempts to project a late date onto a text in transparently early langauge always mean situating the text in an era which we know more about. This may be a large part of the appeal of such an approach. Thus for example Brenner's thesis that Ex. 15 was composed for the Passover feast during the Second Temple Period is father to his dismissal of all of the seeming archaisms as intentional stylistic options. But no other Biblical Hebrew poem really looks like this. We've no affirmative evidence that someone in the Second Temple period, trying to compose something new, would intentionally produce such a text with such a heavy and consistent freight of archaisms. All the archaic elements of Exodus 15 can be found individually in other — often late — poetic material but never with the same consistency and concentration in this fashion all together. If you knew nothing of the Song of the Sea, but knew the other poetic material of the Pentateuch as well as the more archaic of the psalms, you would never be able to use them as a model from which to derive the archaic style of Exodus 15 which just so happens to be supported by material in other Semitic languages. When late Biblical poets try to be archaic, they don't produce material that looks like this, and the most straightforward explanation is that they were either not able, or not inclined, to do so. Why should a late author of the Song of the Sea be so stylistically radical as to use archaic constructions in precisely the way that someone using an early form of Canaanite naturally would?
Anyway I think that the text really is an early poem, not a late poet's attempt to compose in an otherwise unattested archaic style. Here's a fun trick to try. If you run the sound-changes in reverse, you can get some sense of what it may have sounded like early on at some point in early Iron Age Judah. Given how speculative it is (relative chronology is one thing, but with absolute chronology?) I hesitate to call this a reconstruction of anything. The word would have to drop the prefix to describe it. It is definitely a construction. Of what, though, Dagon only knows.
As with all my translations of poetry from the Hebrew Bible, and poetry from early medieval Palestine, I am including audio recordings in Tiberian Hebrew. (Since I have gone and learned to read Hebrew in this fashion in order to produce an audio-companion for a book about this now-dead Hebrew liturgical dialect, and then lent my voice to a whole website about it, I figure I might as well get some use out of it.) I have included Exodus 14.30-31 in the text here, translated as as a small-font preface. The tail end of Ex. 14 forms the context in which Jewish readers since the Middle Ages have most commonly encountered Song, which is to say in prayer books, where it is grouped in with the Pesūqē deZimrā which may be said every day during the Šaḥarīt (Morning Prayer). Since I was including a Tiberian (i.e. medieval) reading, it seemed fitting to follow the siddurim and include Ex. 14:30-31 as a preface. Oh and here's an IPA transcription of the Tiberian Reading.
Here's a recording of me chanting the beginning (through 15:5) in Tiberian Hebrew, using the Temani Shira mode:
Here's a recording the whole text in a speaking voice
Song of the Sea
Exodus [14:30-15:1-18]
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
And on that day did Yahweh deliver Israel from the hand of Egypt, and Israel see Egypt dead on the seashore. Israel saw what great handiwork Yahweh had wrought down on Egypt, and the people feared Yahweh, and trusted in Yahweh and in His slave Moses. Then did Moses and the Israelites sing this song for Yahweh. They said:
Sing1 for Yahweh for his coup of splendor: Horse and horseman he hurled to the sea. Yahweh is my strength and stave2 he became my salvation. This god is mine whom I exalt, god of my father whom I extol: Yahweh the war man3.Yahweh is his name. Pharaoh's forces4 he flung to the sea His pick of captains pitched in the Reed Sea. The depths whelmed them over They were downed in the deep like stone Your right hand, Yahweh is majestic and right. Your right hand, Yahweh, shatters enemies. In ultimate splendor you felled those against You. Fired forth your fury to combust them like straw. At your nostrils' flare the waters heaped, The waves like mounds stood up. The deep congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said "I'll pursue, I'll subdue I will share out the spoils, my gullet will glut on them I will draw my sword, my hand despoil them." But you blew forth your breath and sea whelmed them over. They went like lead, down in the mighty water. Who is like you, Yahweh among the gods? Who is like you awesome among the holy? Awe-bringerhymn-hearer Wreaker of wonders! You stretched your right hand and earth gulped them under, You guided in your kindness that folk you redeemed, In your strength led their road To your holy abode. Peoples heard and as peoples quaked, The dwellers of Plesheth throttled with anguish. The chieftains of Edom panicked. The sires of Moab seized with shudders The kings of Canaan quailed and melted. Down upon them fell every horror; Your brawned arm loomed and they were like stone As your people crossed over, Lord Yahweh, As the people you made your creation crossed over. You brought them to plant them on the mount you bequeathed, The ground you deemed your dwelling, Yahweh The sanctum O Lord your hand founded. All hail Lord Yahweh King for all time.
1 - I have emended the opening with the verson from Ex. 15:21
2 - the character string יהויהי is probably best divided as יהו יהי.
3 - The Pšiṭṭā gives a translation implying יהוה גיבור במלחמה which is also found in the Samaritan Pentateuch. The LXX has Κύριος συντρίβων πολέμους "The Lord who shatters wars" which has been written about a great deal. There are three possibilities for the LXX. (a) it reflects — in translation — a radically pious intervention against the anthropomorphism of the MT version, (b) it reflects a slightly pious rendering of something like the Samaritan version (with the ב particle understood in the sense "against"), or (c) it reflects a variant which has left no trace elsewhere (and therefore the pious intervention lies not in the translation but its Vorlage). The real possibility of (c) should be kept in mind. Consider that while the Vulgate's "Dominus quasi vir pugnator, Omnipotens nomen eius" may reflect a Hebrew text according with the MT in the first half (though the "quasi" is either a bit of minor pious fudging or reflecting a Hebrew text with כאיש instead as in Isa 42:13), the following "Omnipotens nomen eius" seems utterly inexplicable as reflecting anything other than a Herbrew text containing שדי שמו, (which I think actually works nicer as poetry). More's the pity that we have no Qumran text for Exodus 15. In any case, evidently at some point a confusion crept into the tradition which yielded the Samaritan-type version for this line, whether or not it underlies the LXX. As איש מלחמה and גבור are commonly synonymous, conflation of two variants (יהוה איש מלחמה and יהוה גבור) seems like a plausible reason. גבור makes better sense metrically, but איש מלחמה seems to reflect the early anthropomorphism. Anyway, my translation doesn't care about literalism and so this is a bit moot on that score.
4 — metrically, if one were feeling speculative, one might wonder if מרכבת פרעה and פרעה וחיל are ancient variants which have been conflated. I went with the former. Of course, as always, my Tiberian Hebrew reading (meant to be a rendering of the text as it was known to the Tiberian Masoretes of the late first millennium) sticks to the Masoretic Text without any emendations.
The Original:
ויושע יהוה ביום ההוא את־ישראל מיד מצרים וירא ישראל את־מצרים מת על־שפת הים וירא ישראל את־היד הגדלה אשר עשה יהוה במצרים וייראו העם את־יהוה ויאמינו ביהוה ובמשה עבדו: אז ישיר־משה ובני־ישראל את־השירה הזאת ליהוה ויאמרו לאמר שירו ליהוה כי־גאה גאה
This translation originally appeared on Asymptote's blog as a Translation Tuesday feature Born in 1863, Jules Boissière (Juli Boïssièra) spent his early years as a journalist, hobnobbing with the likes of Amouretti and Murras, and writing anemic verse with great virtuosity in two languages. In 1886 he changed careers, and headed for Hanoi, part of the recently consolidated territory of French Indo-China. He served in the 11th Alpine Infantry Battalion, and saw combat in some of the last few battles to conquer the Tonkinese countryside, before beginning his tenure in the French administrative corps in Saigon and Huế where he learned the language today known as Vietnamese, acquired at least a basic knowledge of Classical Chinese, and cultivated the fondness for opium for which he was to become notorious. He served a long post in Bình Định before returning to France to marry Thérèse Roumanille (Terèsa Romanilha), daughter of Joseph Roumanille the reactionary patriarch of the Provençal Félibre movement. Boissière returned to Tonkin with his wife in 1892, taking stewardship of the Revue Indochinoise. After another leave of absence in 1895, he was promoted to Vice-Resident 1st Class and died a painful intestinal death two years later. Boissière wrote prolifically, but published little during his life. He is now best remembered for his collection of French Indo-Chinese short storiestitled Fumeurs d'Opium "Opium Smokers". He also produced a sizable amount of poetry, both in French and in Occitan, a lot of which — particularly that from his later years — is extremely good. It is likely that some of his poetry remains unpublished. A posthumous collection of his Occitan verse Li Gabian "The Seagulls" was published in 1899 by his wife, who extracted the poems from among his manuscripts. Reading it, I have come across quite a few interesting pieces, the more so because generally "colonial exotic" themes are rare in Occitan literature of this period, which preoccupied itself mostly with its own soil. Like the stories in Fumeurs d'Opium, some of the poems deal with Chinese and Indo-Chinese themes. Interwoven with long odes of nostalgic yearning for his native country and rhapsodies to his fellow félibres, one finds things like an imaginative sonnet depicting a Chinese Princess reading Li Bai, or some lusciously lilting lines about stargazing from a boat gliding down the Mekong. Some are of a piece with some of the best of his French "oriental" poems. And then there are three or four poems where he goes Next Level, as in the one translated here, which caught me completely by surprise. It is like nothing at all that he wrote in French that I've seen. I was not expecting this. Not even a little bit.
The Buddha
By Jules Boissière
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Our soldiers won then torched a domicile. The owner with his sons ran half a mile Under gunfire. On the ancestors' altar Not guarding the old creeds or their old shelter, The Buddha gave the wolfish men a smile.
How many hours has it been since! Where now Is that house? Where's the pudgy god whose brow And smile are sign of fate's indifferent law? When man beneath mute Heaven prays or cries I see again that Buddha's ruddy jaw, His moonlike face and his too tranquil eyes.
Audio of me reading this poem in Occitan
The Original:
Though Boissière was a native speaker of Lengadocian Occitan, he like the rest of his generation wrote in Provençal Occitan, specifically the variety of Rhodanian Provençal which had been raised to literary status by Mistral and others among the Félibrige movement. I give the poem in original Roumanille-Mistralian orthography, copied directly from Li Gabian, and in the more recent classicizing orthography. For all future Provençal texts in Roumanille-Mistralian orthography, I plan to include a parallel version in classical orthography.
Classical Orthography Lo Boddha Juli Boïssièra Brulavan un ostau, nòstei soudards vincèires; — Lo mèstre ambé sei fius peralin fugissiá Sota la fusilhada; e sus l'autar dei rèires, Luènh d'aparar l'ostau, l'autar e lei vièlhs crèires, Ais òme' alobatits lo Boddha sorrisiá Quant d'ora' an debanat desempèi! Monte es ara L'ostau? Monte es lo Dièu poput de quau la cara Sorrisenta retrais lo Sòrt indifferent? — E sota lo cèu mut, quand l'òme prèga e crida, Revese dau Boddha lei gauta' acolorida' E sa fàcia de luna, e sei vistóns serens.
Original Orthography Lou Bouddha Juli Bouissiero Brulavon un oustau nòsti soudard vincèire; Lou mèstre emé si fiéu peralin fugissié Souto la fusihado; e sus l’autar di rèire, Liuen d’apara l’oustau, l’autar e li vièi crèire, Is ome aloubati lou Bouddha sourrisié. Quant d’ouro an debana desempèi! Mounte es aro L’oustau? Mount es lou diéu poupu de quau la caro Sourrisènto retrais lou sort indiferènt? E souto lou cèu mut, quand l’ome prègo e crido, Revese dóu Bouddha li gauto acoulourido, E sa fàci de luno, e si vistoun seren.
Yahweh the Shepherd
Psalm 23
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Yahweh shepherds me I want for naught. He lets me lie down in grassy meadows, He guides me out by quiet waters. He brings my life back. He leads me straight on Justice's footpaths For his name's sake. Though I tread in the death-shadow vale I dread no harm: for you are with me. Your shepherd's crook, Your walking-staff... These things are my solace. You lay out a table to feed me in the face of my foes. You moisten my head with ointment. My cup overflows. Let naught but goodness and kindness flock with me All the days of my life And the House of Yahweh be my abode For many long days.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation:
The payṭan Shmu'el ben Hoshaˁna (known also as Hashlishi "the Third", the ultimate rank he attained at the Yeshiva) was one of the central figures of the Eretz Israel Yeshiva in Jerusalem in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, and a prolific author of Hebrew liturgical poetry. The Yotzer is a sequence of poems which adorn the benedictions associated with the morning reading of the Shemaˁ.
This brief piyyūṭ is an ahava, the fourth in such a sequence, introducing the second benediction before the Shemaˁ, dealing with God's love for Israel. (Whence Israel as the "beloved" of the final verse). Like many ahavot, it includes an alphabetic acrostic. In this case, though, the letters occur in reverse order, evoking the Resurrection's reversal of death at the end of days. It draws on the Bible heavily for its language, and the effect of its language (e.g. for the ending see Hosea 14:5).
My translation is fairly free and interpretative. For example, the Messiah is not directly mentioned in this poem by that title. Rather his coming is mentioned in oblique form "with (the) Nūn of (the verb) Yinnōn" which means more or less something like "when the Messiah's reign begins" or perhaps "when the Messiah is born" depending on which way you swing the mysticism. Yinnōn is an obscure verb occurring only once in the Hebrew Bible (Ps. 72:17). Some (see e.g. B. Sanhedrin 98b) took it to be the Messiah's name, and Yinnōn is frequently used as a byword for the Messiah in piyyūṭīm. The letter nūn wound up especially associated with the Messiah in this connection, in part on account of the fact that n-w-n was taken to be the verb's root.
The audio recording is chanted in a reconstruction of Tiberian Hebrew. Shmuel, being a member of the Palestinian Yeshiva (which had recently been moved to Jerusalem from Tiberias) would have been well positioned to know this pronunciation of Hebrew. (Although readers who could teach this pronunciation were to quickly become impossible to find outside of Palestine.) It is not hard to picture Shmuel using it in reading his own Yotzerot.
An Ahava on the Resurrection
Shmuel Ben Hoshaˁna
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
You turn man back to dust, but will turn back in kind with kindness that we hymn. You will bind back his bones, extend again his tendons, defend and fend for him. You will fit him with flesh, you will screen him with skin at the Messiah's dawn. Then will your beloved blossom like the lily, cast root like Lebanon.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in Tiberian Hebrew:
To comment properly on this nigh-untranslatable poem would require an essay of considerable length. Suffice it to say that one should remember that this was written before Israel gained control of East Jerusalem (and with it, the Old City.) On A Night of Rain in Jerusalem
By Uri Tzvi Greenberg
Requested by Daniel Harpaz (thank you for your support) The few trees in the yard moan like trees of a woodland, River-laden, the loud deep thunderclouds reign. The Angels of Peace guard my slumbering children In the moan of the trees, and dark gathering of rain. Out there: Jerusalem - city of Abraham's trial and glory Where he bound his Son on a mount when time came. The fire kindled at dawn still burns on the mountain. The rains quench it not: the covenant's flame.. "Should God command me now as once He commanded My Father of old, I will surely obey" Sing my heart and my flesh in this night of rain And Angels of Peace guard my children till day! What can equal this glory, this miracle zeal For Mount Moriah - alive from that ancient day on?
The covenant's blood sings in this father in prayer Prepared for a Temple Mount offering at dawn. Out there: Jerusalem, and the moaning trees of God Felled there by enemies in all generations. The river-laden clouds bear sunders of lightning And thunder. These in this rainstruck night are my tidings From the Almighty's Mouth till the end of generations. -1954
Audio recording of me reading the original Hebrew:
On Heathen Footsteps
Eisig Silberschlag
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Sun and wind and sea And your body burning on sand, Sun and wind and sea And your body's wordless demand, Sun and wind and sea And your body in power of it all, Sun and wind and sea— Ah, a life without God, without thrall.
Audio recording of me reading the original Hebrew:
Hitler Spring
By Eugenio Montale
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Nor she to see whom the sun turns about..
— Dante (?) to Giovanni Quirini
The dense white cloud of moths whirls crazy around
the whitish lights and over the parapets,
spreading a blanket on the ground that crackles
like sprinkled sugar underfoot. Now coming summer frees
the nightfrosts held in lockdown of the dead
season's secret cellars and in the gardens
that climb down from Maiano to these sandpits.
A hellsent herald just flew over the avenue
to a war-whoop of goons. A gaping orchestral pit, firelit
and decked with swastikas, seized and gulped him down.
Windows are shuttered up, shabby and harmless
though even they are fitted with guns and war toys;
the butcher who laid berries on the snouts
of slaughtered baby goats has closed. The feast day
of killers meek and mild, still ignorant of blood, has turned
to a sick contra dance of shattered wings,
of shadow larvae on the sandbars, and
the water goes on eating at the shore
and nobody is blameless anymore.
So, all for nothing? And the Roman candles
at San Giovanni slowly whitening
the skyline, and the vows and long farewells
as binding as a baptism in dismal
wait for the horde (but a gem scored the air,
strewing your ice, the edges of your coasts,
with the angels of Tobias, the seven,
seed of the future) and the heliotropes
born of your hands — all of it burned away,
sucked dry by a pollen that shrieks like fire
and stings like hail on wind....
Oh the wounded spring
is still a festival if it can freeze
this death back into death. Look up again
Clizia: it is fate, it is the fate
of changed you keeping up your changeless love,
until the sightless sun you bear within you
is dazzled in the Other and consumed
in Him, for all. Perhaps the sirens, the bells
tolling to hail the monsters on this eve
of all hell breaking loose already blend
with the sound loosed from the heavens that descends
and conquers—with breath of a dawn that may break
for all, tomorrow, white but without wings
of horror, on scorched rockbeds of the south.
The Original:
La Primavera Hitleriana
Né quella ch’a veder lo sol si gira…
— Dante (?) a Giovanni Quirini
Folta la nuvola bianca delle falene impazzite
turbina intorno agli scialbi fanali e sulle spallette,
stende a terra una coltre su cui scricchia
come su zucchero il piede; l’estate imminente sprigiona
ora il gelo notturno che capiva
nelle cave segrete della stagione morta,
negli orti che da Maiano scavalcano a questi renai.
Da poco sul corso è passato a volo un messo infernale
tra un alalà di scherani, un golfo mistico acceso
e pavesato di croci a uncino l’ha preso e inghiottito,
si sono chiuse le vetrine, povere
e inoffensive benché armate anch’esse
di cannoni e giocattoli di guerra,
ha sprangato il beccaio che infiorava
di bacche il muso dei capretti uccisi,
la sagra dei miti carnefici che ancora ignorano il sangue
s’è tramutata in un sozzo trescone* d’ali schiantate,
di larve sulle golene, e l’acqua seguita a rodere
le sponde e più nessuno è incolpevole.
Tutto per nulla, dunque? – e le candele
romane, a San Giovanni, che sbiancavano lente
l’orizzonte, ed i pegni e i lunghi addii
forti come un battesimo nella lugubre attesa
dell’orda (ma una gemma rigò l’aria stillando
sui ghiacci e le riviere dei tuoi lidi
gli angeli di Tobia, i sette, la semina
dell’avvenire) e gli eliotropi nati
dalle tue mani – tutto arso e succhiato
da un polline che stride come il fuoco
e ha punte di sinibbio…
Oh la piagata
primavera è pur festa se raggela
in morte questa morte! Guarda ancora
in alto, Clizia, è la tua sorte, tu
che il non mutato amor mutata serbi,
fino a che il cieco sole che in te porti
si abbacini nell’Altro e si distrugga
in Lui, per tutti. Forse le sirene, i rintocchi
che salutano i mostri nella sera
della loro tregenda, si confondono già
col suono che slegato dal cielo, scende, vince –
col respiro di un’alba che domani per tutti
si riaffacci, bianca ma senz’ali
di raccapriccio, ai greti arsi del sud…
Just a little more Biblical poetry, this time from one of the Twelve "Minor" Prophets. The recording continues my habit of reading the Bible in a reconstruction of medieval Tiberian Hebrew phonology.
Audio recording of me chanting the original text in Tiberian Hebrew
"Why, God?"
Habakkuk 1:1-4
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
The message that came in a vision upon prophet Habakkuk:
How long, Yahweh, shall I cry out and You not listen? I shriek OUTRAGE to You, and You do not deliver! Why do You show me horror, tolerate godawful things? Plunder and outrage are all before me combat and conflict all about. So the laws as taught are crippled, and justice comes out never. For the wicked are closing in on the good so justice comes out crooked.
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