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.
Another Biblical one, and again I've included an audio recording of me reading the text in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation. I think I'll do that with all my Biblical Hebrew stuff from now on. By the Streams of Babylon
Psalm 137
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Audio recording of me chanting the original text using reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation
By the streams of Babylon,
There we sat and oh did we weep
When we recalled our Zion.
There, on the branches of the poplars
We hung up our lyres.
For there our captors asked us to sing,
Our plunderers bade us rejoice:
"Sing us one of your Zionite songs!"
But how can we sing the song of Yahweh On foreign soil?
If I should forget you, O Jerusalem,
May my right hand fall paralyzed!
Let my tongue cleave up to my palate
If I do not recall you,
If I do not keep Jerusalem
At the peak of all my joys.
Recall, O Yahweh, the Edomites
On that day of Jerusalem, saying:
"Flatten it, flatten it
Down to the foundation"
O Daughter of Babylon!
Daughter destroyer!
Happy the man who deals in kind
With you as you dealt with us.
Happy the man who seizes and smashes
Your babies against the boulders.
The Seal of Love
Song of Songs [8:5-7]
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Audio recording of me chanting the original text using reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation
(He speaks:) Who is that coming up from the wildlands,
Her head on her lover's shoulder?
(She speaks:)
Beneath the apple tree I aroused you.
Beneath that tree I received you
There where your mother conceived you
Where your mother gave birth to you.
Bind me now as a seal on your heart,
As an amulet upon your arm.
For love is fierce as death,
But jealousy cruel as the grave.
Even its shards are the sparks of fire,
Of an almighty flame.
Whole oceans cannot put love out,
Nor any river sweep it away.
Any man who tried
To barter his live savings for love,
Would be paid in full with shame.
Aleksey Nikolayevich Zhokhov (1885-1915) was my first cousin thrice removed (my great grandfather's cousin). He was a Russian arctic explorer and cartographer who participated in the first polar expedition to navigate the entire Arctic coast from end to end. He discovered a small Siberian island which was posthumously named after him. He himself died on the expedition, and was buried in the Arctic. In this poem of his, the speaker imagines the lonely death of a wanderer in the Arctic. Aleksey was of course unaware that he himself would die such a death, and that this spookily prescient poem would be inscribed on a metal plaque over his grave.
Arctic End
By Aleksey Zhokhov
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Under an icy clod of cold Taymyr Where a snowfox, startled to a somber bark, Alone speaks of the drear life of this world A bleary poet rests in peace and dark. Morning Aurora's beam will shine no gold On the forgotten singer's lyre beneath these skies. The grave is deep as Tuscarora's Rift, Deep as one woman's dear, beloved eyes. If only he could reverence them once more, Gaze on them even from afar across this sweep, Then death herself would not be so severe, The bottom of the grave would not seem deep.
The Original:
Под глыбой льда холодного Таймыра,
Где лаем сумрачным испуганный песец
Один лишь говорит о тусклой жизни мира,
Найдет покой измученный певец.
Не кинет золотом луч утренней Авроры
На лиру чуткую забытого певца —
Могила глубока, как бездна Тускароры,
Как милой женщины любимые глаза.
Когда б он мог на них молиться снова,
Глядеть на них хотя б издалека,
Сама бы смерть была не так сурова
И не казалась бы могила глубока.
A terrific thunderstorm rages over the mountains on the northern edge of the Najd. The scene is imagined over so vast an area that it must be poetic fiction. (As the medieval commentators note: Sitār, Yaḏbul and Qaṭan cannot possibly all be seen from the same place.)
From the Muˁallaqa: A Mountain Storm Attributed to Imru' al-Qays Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Friend, can you see the lightning? There: its flash bolting like hands in a crownbright cloudheap, quick to shed light on all things; there: like the lamps of a hermit who has oiled each coily wick. I sat to watch it with my friends, between Ḍārij and Al-ˁUdhayb. Oh I gazed far enough to see the storm raise its right arm on Mount Qaṭan, and its left on Al-Sitār, dumping its rainload hard around Kutayfa and blowing flat the great Kanahbul trees. Its shower bucked out over Mount Qanān panicking all the whitefoot Ibices. At Taymā' it left not one palm-trunk standing nor rampart made of anything but rock, Mount Thabīr in its water-onslaught stood like a tribe's chieftain in a stripelined cloak. Come dawn, the upper peaks of Al-Mujaymir stood spindle-whirled with storm-debris all round, the flood's bale flung on Al-Ghabīṭ like cloth-sacks dropped by a Yemeni merchant to the ground. Come morning, finches noised about the dales as if blind drunk on pepper-fiery wine. Come evening, raptors lay drowned at its edge like squill-roots twisted into a freakish twine.
Audio recording in reconstructed Early Classical Arabic pronunciation
A more rhythmicized recitation
The Arabic of my audio recording is in what I choose to call "Early Classical Arabic" pronunciation. To put it grandiosely, it is a kind of Arabic that hasn't been heard for over a thousand years. To put it plainly, it is a speculative reconstruction of the kind of Arabic pronunciation the grammarian Sibawayh might have used, based on his description of Arabic speech-sounds, and augmented with some inference based on typology. The main differences from textbook Classical Arabic as it is taught and learned today are as follows: The ج was /ɟ/ (not /dʒ/) The ش was /ɕ/ (not /ʃ/) The ص was (for an indeterminate number of speakers including Sibawayh) an affricate /t͡sˤ/ rather than the fricative /sˁ/. (For reasoning behind this reconstruction see this article by Ahmad Al-Jallad). The ض was a pharyngealized lateral, probably /ɮˤ/ or /d͡ɮˤ/ (the modern /dˁ/ pronunciation is much more recent) The ت and ك appear to have been quite strongly aspirated /kʰ tʰ/. In addition to the familiar three vowels /a: i: u:/ there existed /e:/ for many speakers (and, more marginally, /o:/ for some.) The vowel /a:/ was optionally raised to [e:] due to i-mutation under a complex of different circumstances, partially neutralizing the contrast between /a:/ and phonemic /e:/ and giving the realizations of /a:/ a range and distribution not commonly heard in modern elevated poetic recitations.
Although I render ش as alveolo-palatal /ɕ/, full disclosure requires noting that another possibility would be a true palatal non-sibilant /ç/, which is what many (perhaps most) posit based on a strict interpretation of Sibawayhi's statement. Now, Sibawayhi, who doesn't get enough credit as a phonetician, could probably have distinguished palatal from alveolo-palatal articulation. But whether he would have cared to is a different question. Although he groups ي ش ج at the same place of articulation, it is only ش which causes assimilation of the definite article. Thus there was something about šīn that made it pattern, for assimilation purposes, with the coronals rather than the dorsals. The most straightforward interpretation would be that this is because šīn was indeed a sibilant. Sibilants as an articulatory class involve a centerline grooved tongue focusing the airstream such that it strikes the teeth. Whereas non-sibilant fricatives do not involve the teeth as a secondary articulator. Sibilants, probably because of the need to involve the teeth, are always coronal. Alveolo-palatal articulation sits uneasily in a no-man's land between the dorsal and coronals, and is as far back as you can go and still produce a sound that behaves acoustically and structurally like a sibilant. For /ç/ to function as a sibilant, it must thus have front articulation [ç̟], which (notational and theoretical games aside) makes it functionally /ɕ/. One phonologically interesting way in which Sibawayhi's Arabic was likely counterintuitive from the standpoint of many modern accents of the standard language, and doubly so for non-native Arabic speakers given how they tend to be taught, is that what we normally think of as voiced plain stops /b d ɟ/ and voiceless plain stops /t k/ did not — strictly speaking — have presence or absence of voicing per se as their distinguishing feature. In this, Sibawayh's Arabic would align with certain modern dialects like San'ani Arabic. (See Phonation and glottal states in Modern South Arabian and San’ani Arabic by Janet Watson and Barry Heselwood for this and more, including a good explanation of a crucial articulatory category in Sibawayh's description.) The chief featural distinction between the two sets was probably aspiration in the latter and non-aspiration (with adductive glottal tension) in the former. In a dialect like this, although /b d ɟ/ probably did not have fully specified voicing, much of the time this would be of little phonetic consequence since in most positions voicing would be triggered positionally. In post-pausal position, however, although /b d ɟ/ would trigger a glottal prephonation state, their actual voice-onset time would not necessarily be different from that of a voiceless non-aspirated stop.
Hymn to Ares
(C. 2nd-4th century A.D.)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman God-brawned Ares, gold-helmed driver of the chariot in the stars. Stout-spirit shieldman bronzed in armor! Bulwark of Olympus, Guardian of cities and spear-potent Father of Victory, the fine dame at war! Enemy-harrowing ally of Justice, the righteous man's commander in chief, scepter-master of manly good wheeling Your fireball amid the wayfaring planets' seven paths through cosmic air where Your firesteeds forever bear You over the thirdmost orbit immortal. Hear me, bequeather of brave youth's bloom, matchless ally of mortalkind, blaze a gentle beam from Your planet straight into our life with strength of war to finally beat the bite of cowardice now and ever from out my skull. Give my mind clout to crush the soul's treacherous impulses, help me temper the spirit-furies that spur me into bloody mayhem, and make me brave enough to keep within the kindly laws of peace, O Lord of War. Help me flee the fray of foul rancor, and dodge the wraiths of a violent death.
Hymn to Poseidon
(Ca. 6th century BC)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman My song begins for great Poseidon the Earthmover, endless shifter of the gaping deep; god of waters, Lord of Helicon, homed in the expanse of ancient Aegae. Earthshaker, you the gods endowed with double honor to be tamer of steeds and savior of ships. Hail, Poseidon sire of waveroads the blue-haired god who girds the earth. Blessed one, I pray your broad kind heart take care of us who cross your seas. The Original:
To Say A Prayer
By Abraham Sutzkever
Translated by A.Z. Foreman Click to hear me recite the original Yiddish I have the urge to say a prayer. I do not know to whom. He who once gave me comfort will not hear it, should it come. To whom, then, would I pray? I am its choked-up prey. Maybe I should entreat a star up there: "old distant friend, Come substitute for my lost speech. I am at my words' end." That good star deep in ether Won't hear my prayer either. But I have got to say a prayer. Someone very near, Somebody in my soul is tortured, and demands a prayer. So I jabber on and on Senselessly until dawn. - Vilna Ghetto, January 1942
The Original:
גלוסט זיך מיר צו טאָן אַ תּפֿילה
אבֿרהם סוצקעווער
גלוסט זיך מיר צו טאָן אַ תּפֿילה – ווייס איך ניט צו וועמען,
For Rokhl. Wherever you are these days, רחלע, this one is for you.
A poem for Jews who had escaped the Vilna ghetto and fled to the forests, in order to participate in bushwhacking guerrilla warfare against the Nazis. Sutzkever dated all his wartime poems. This one, importantly, is dated two days before Sutzkever and his wife would follow the men here hymned, escaping to the woods themselves, eventually joining a Jewish resistance unit commanded by Moshe Rudnitski.
Sprout up! Staunch heroes, adamantine lads, go take your ground. Sprout up! Sons of the future, make the world know what you are, For all the will of all a people, swallowed underground, Condenses — swelling lava in your breast beneath a scar. Now, if the sword has gone to rust in vagabond confusion, Then file off all the yesterdays, and sharpen its today. Never is it too late to show the people's retribution. Redeem the age-old sin with steel. There is a price to pay. Cities have all flown their true colors, turned to stone betrayers, And riveted your way to sizzling graves at every hand. But forests welcome you with singing leaves to safer lairs: "Come, come to us our darlings, and refine your fair demand." Our new anointed Jewish rangers, striders of the trees, Against the brink that lay in wait, your feet kick back with No. Such glory glints within you! Glory of the Maccabees As once it did in our land two millennia ago. There always will be those who bend to earth, who tire, who kneel. Pity the slave that rests his hope in mercy from a slave. Be men and Maccabees. Blast for rebellion, and in steel Let honor shine again with every melée of the brave.
— Vilna Ghetto, September 10th, 1943 The Original:
Notes on the Yiddish:
With Sutzkever, as with Robert Frost, if you do not read and listen closely, you will miss much. This poem is more than simply a bit of rousing verse. It can work perfectly well as such, but on closer listening things grow increasingly complex. I have with profit consulted Frieda W. Aaron's comments on this poem, though I find her reading and translation somewhat unsatisfactory. Vakst aróys, ir heldn — féste áyngeshparte yúngen Vakst aróys, ir tsúkunftzin, un zayt der velt bavúst! Gor der viln funem folk, in úntererd farshlúngen, Kléyet zikh - a lávediker shtrom in áyer brust.
(Sprout up, you heroes — strong unyeilding young men / sprout up, you future-sons, and be renowned to the world! / All the will of the people, swallowed underground, congeals itself — a lavalike surge in your breast)
Tsukunftzin seems to be "sons of the future" but zin can have another meaning of "consciousness, sense." Tsukunftzin could be taken as "sense of (a) future" i.e. "you who give a sense that we have a future despite this extermination." In other poems, Sutzkever highlights the identity of zin/zin "sons/sense" in interesting ways. Still, though, the fact that zin "sense" is singular makes this a stretch. It's worth noting that this poem was first published two years after the date of composition, with a hyphen between the two lexemes. i.e. צוקונפט-זין tsukunft-zin as if to call attention to the sense of the two elements. (The hyphen does not appear in later reprintings.)
It is easy to take, as Aaron does, the final two lines to mean "The entire will of the people has been swallowed under the earth / But a lava surge is coming together in your breast." But note that line three does not contain a main verb, or a conjunction. The whole line is in fact the subject of kleyenzikh which has a dash after it. i.e. "All the will of the people, having been swallowed underground, coalesces — a lavalike surge...." Moreover, the word untererd is "underground" not just in the geological sense, but the clandestine political one, as in "an underground movement." In Yiddish as in English, to "go underground" (geyen in der untererd) means to go clandestine, to start behaving in some covert way.
The final line is interesting. Kleyen zikh is a curious verb which I had to ask others about. It appears to be a synonym of kleben zikh "to take form, to coagulate, coalesce, to be sticky, to stick together" (i.e. like kley "glue.")
The word shtrom has two meanings Yiddish: "course, torrent, tide" and "scar." Oyb es hot farzhávert in der vóglenish dos ayzn Faylt fun em aróp di nekhtns un em shlayft atsínd. Kéynmol iz nit shpet dem folks nekóme tsu baváyzn: Óystsukoyfn mit gevér di dóyresdike zínd.
(If the iron has rusted in wandering / file off from it the yesterday, and sharpen its here and now. / Never is it too late to manifest the people's vengeance: / To redeem with weapons the generations-old sin.)
Frieda Aaron is right I think that the doyresdike zind "generations-old sin, long-lasting sin" is meant to suggest both "the sin of Jewish passivity and the sin of the endless chain of crimes visited upon the Jews." And that the latter is more central. Oyskoyfn "redeem, ransom" has a heavily agentive and aggressive tone to it, it seems to me, given Sutzkever's other uses of it. It is suggestive of overcoming. Of payback, of meeting the enemy blow for blow.
Gever means not only "weapon" but "endurance." S'hobn shtet farvándlt zikh in shtéynerne farréter, Tsúgeshmidt tsu zídndike gríber áyer gang. Hobn vélder aykh bagríst mit zíngendike bléter: -Kumt tsu undz, ir táyere, un láytert dem ferláng.
(The cities have transformed into stone betrayers, / welded to boiling graves your way. / Forests greeted you with singing leaves: / Come to us, dear ones, and polish the demand)
Aaron reads, and transcribes, zidndike (sizzling, boiling, seething, roiling) as if it were zindike (sinful.) Apart from making a hash of the meter, and not being what Sutzkever wrote (I've checked all three volumes of his in which this poem appears, and none of them have zindike), this causes her interpretation of this stanza to go somewhat off the rails. She relates the image thus to sins of hatred and persecution.
Persecution is to the point of course, but I take the zidndike griber as graves that are themselves murderous. The graves are composed not of earth and stone, but of human masses whose roiling hatred makes them lethal to the objects of that hate. These graves you need but step into, and they will boil you alive. Zidndik has the sense of "incited, excited" in reference to people. It is contrasted with the zingendike bleter (note the sound echo zidndik/zingendik) which offer succour and sanctuary. As gentile society has proven itself barbarous, civilizational norm is inverted. It is the wilderness that now offers haven from the savagery of the cities.
Loyb tsu aykh ir nay-gezálbte gvúredike géyer, Áyer fus hot ópgeshtupt dem lókerdinkn rand. S'hot in aykh a glants getón der rum fun Makabéyer, Vi mit yorn tsveytoyznt tsurík in eygn land.
(Praise be to you, you new-anointed, stalwart rovers / your leg has staved back the brink that lay in ambush. / In you the glory of the Maccabees has given forth lustre / As in our own land two thousand years ago.)
Aaron translates gvuredike geyer as "strong questers" which is an odd choice. Gvúredik "stalwart, heroic, intrepid" is nothing so generic and general as "strong." geyer seems more like wanderer, rover.
Lokerdik "lurking" but more specifically "lying in wait, poised to ambush."
opshtupn suggests pushing back, as well as staving off.
Shténdik zénen do tsu dr'erd gebóygene, un míde. Vey dem knekht in hófenung af rákhmim - ba a knekht. Vi di Makabéyer blozt funánder di miríde, Zol der kóved úfloykhtn in shvérdikn gefékht!
(There are always those bowed to the earth, tired. / Woe to the slave in hope of mercy from a slave. / As the Maccabees blow rebellion about, / Let glory shine forth in sword combat.)
The reader's first instinct may be to take blozt as if its subject were the Maccabees. It isn't. blozt is the imperative plural (i.e. blow!). The verb with the separable prefix funanderblozn means roughly " blow all round, blast far and wide."
Gefekht could refer to any sort of combat or skirmish, but the sense of dueling is there as well, of noble hand-to-hand battle. Particularly when connected with swords. There's an epic quality here. These partisans are presumably not actually fighting with swords but with projectile weapons. But here they are elevated to the level of mythic lore.
With my holy poem Clenched between my teeth From my wolfcave — my hole, my home — I go out and I roam From street to street: As a wolf with a wretched bone Clenched between his teeth alone. There is prey enough in the street to sate a wolven hate, and sweet is the humid blood that drips from flesh, but sweeter still is the dry dust settling down on jammed lips. Struggle on the street, The call of throats. Let me this once come out tonight, A deathtooth bite. That bite is me. But I don't come to gnaw. I hunch into my little self With head beneath my paw. Back to my hole I head And lump onto my bed, But I am awake, Untired from holding clenched Between my teeth alone This holy poem As the wolf his wretched bone. The Original:
H. Leivick (the pen name of Leivick Halpern) was born in 1888 in Chervyn, in the Russian Empire. In 1905 he joined the revolutionary Jewish Bund. The next year, he was arrested by Russian Imperial authorities for distributing revolutionary literature. He refused any legal assistance during his trial and instead delivered a thunderous speech denouncing the tsarism and autocracy. He was sentenced to four years of hard labor (in Minsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg) followed by permanent exile in Siberia, to which he was forcibly marched, on foot, in 1912, over the course of four months. He was finally smuggled out of Siberia with aid of Jewish revolutionaries in the US, and sailed to the America in the summer of 1913. He returned in 1925 to what was by then the Soviet Union, where he was welcomed as a great denouncer of tsarism, and his works printed widely. The feeling, however, was not at all mutual. He returned to the US, quite un-enthusiastic about the Soviet Union, about Soviet life, and about the future of Soviet Jews.
The poem here is the first in his book Lider Fun Gan Eydn: 1932-1936 "Lyrics from Eden: 1932-1936" (downloadable in Yiddish here) a collection of poems written during his four-year stay in a tuberculosis Sanatorium in Colorado a few years after his return from the Soviet Union.
The steppes of Siberia and of Colorado are fused and confused in the poet's mind. Part of him is still in the snow of Siberian exile, even as his body is in the flames of tubercular fever in Colorado. The poem calls to mind the ninth part of his long cycle אין שניי In Snow about his Siberian experience. In that poem, he comes to a gate and asks to be allowed in, to warm himself from the freezing cold, but is denied after people ask who he is and why he is on the road. Here, after having door on door shut to him, as a Russian Jew, as a political prisoner, then again as a Jew rejected while freezing his way through Siberia, he finds the gates and doors open to him in America — a country which he came to love probably more deeply and gratefully than any non-immigrant ever could. But what do these gates and doors in "The Land Colorado" lead to? Life or death? Unknown. As he survived the snow of Siberia, can he survive the tubercular fire here in Colorado? America is also where in the end he is to lay down his burden, his זאַק מיט געשריי, the sack of ache and screams he has born on his proverbial shoulders.
The first line also calls to mind the Nileh, the prayer recited on Yom Kippur, which reads פתח לנו שער בעת נעילת שער כי פנה יום psakh lonu shaar b'eys nilas shaar ki fono yoym "open to us the gates at the time of closing gates wherefore the day has turned." The referent is the gates of heaven, which are about to be closed, but the supplicant asks that they be open for just a bit longer to receive the final prayers. Here, however, he asks the gates themselves to open, not God (as in the prayer) or any corporeal resident (as in In Snow) to open them for him. The celestial is supplanted by, transformed into, the terrestrial.
There is also the matter of the שוועל shvel — the threshold. The liminal place where worlds meet. The poet does not know whether he will leave the sanatorium dead or alive. That shvel is — as we find out in later poems in the collection — a meeting-place of death and life, and of God and Man (or would be if God could ever meet with Man.) This becomes important in later poems in the book which deal with Spinoza and Spinoza's God.
That an avowed unreligious secularist who loathed the chains of tradition should allude to Jewish prayer and mysticism in this fashion, and even demonstrate a mystical yearning, is not in the least surprising. He would also have had every reason to expect his secular readers, many of them, to "get it."
Gates, open! Draw closer, Threshold! You'll tell. I come once again To my snug little cell. My body — fire, My head — snow; And on my shoulders A sack of woe. Goodbye. Goodbye. Hands. Eyes. That day. Farewell on the lips Burnt out — burned away. Farewell to whom? Fled whom? What past? The eternal questions... This time do not ask. In fire, in flames The steppeland spreads, And snow in the flames On the mountains' heads. Look: gate and door Are open to me!1 Hospital or prison? Or a monastery? I lay down at your feet My sack of woe, Land Colorado Of fire and snow!
1 - Language-play here. In Yiddish, בײַ אים איז אָפֿן טיר און טויער ba im iz ofn tir un toyer "door and gate are open to him" is a way of saying "he's doing well in life, he's made it."
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