Whose fault is it that your tree is unseen,
garden in snow, my garden in snow.
Whose fault is it that your tree is unseen,
that a woman goes walking in you
and her breasts rise and tremble
like a ship on agitated waves and foam,
a ship on the ocean with two pirates
yelping they are two pirates—
garden in snow, my garden in snow.
Whose fault is it that there is no deer,
garden in snow, my garden in snow.
Whose fault is it that there is no deer,
that a priest who has to be as pious as a child
runs after his hat in the wind
and shouts after it “hey” and “ho” and “hallo”!
And the hat in its desperate swirl
doesn’t hear him, in its desperate swirl—
garden in snow, my garden in snow.
Whose fault is it that I’m a stranger to you,
garden in snow, my garden in snow.
Whose fault is it that I’m a stranger to you,
that I still wear my scarf and my hat,
the likes of which nobody else in this whole country owns,
I who have the kind of beard your wind parts,
the way a woman parts straw while looking for an egg
for her sick child, looking for an egg from a hen—
garden in snow, my garden in snow.
A Velvet Dress
The young lady in bed stood on her head
and with her naked feet in the air
burst into tears, like a squall—
“A velvet dress, a velvet dress!”
The old woman with closed sleepy eyes
promised to buy her a great brass trumpet
so she could puff up her cheeks
and blow into it whenever she wants.
But that didn’t satisfy
the young lady in bed who stood on her head.
Her naked feet twisted in the air like a bagel,
she kept on insisting—
“A velvet dress, a velvet dress!”
The old woman opened her eyes and softly
promised her, “If you would only go to sleep
I will buy you the red flute from the shepherd
which makes sounds like doo-doo and doodle-a-doo.”
It looked like the young lady in bed who stood on her head
had almost forgotten the velvet dress—
her naked feet, her hands stretched out in wild childish joy,
waving them in front, waving them at the side—
until she reminded herself once more.
And with her crazy feet flailing in the air
the young lady in bed who stood on her head
kept on insisting, “A velvet dress,
a velvet dress!” And nothing but.
Kol Nidre
The old clown from Karakhamba
used to shred onion into his coffee.
“I am sad,” I say to myself,
with the melody of Kol Nidre in the dark.
How oddly his red eyes
blinked over the clay cup;
with a plain wooden spoon
he ate the onion with his coffee.
And seven days of autumn rain on the window
won’t remind you of death
as want does, moaning drawing out
its moaning in each sip.
“I will go where my forefathers have gone,”
the open mouth said to the wooden spoon;
“my wife, Baleyke, is already there.
I will go where my forefathers have gone.”
The pieces of onion in the spoon
looked like broken pearls;
yet they also looked like tobacco-yellowed
thin fingers playing a dulcimer.
In a dress of many yards of cloth
Baleyke danced before her groom.
Why are you crying, clown from Karakhamba,
this is only my Kol Nidre melody.
The clay coffee cup is warm,
like my heart, which was born blind;
and the onion, that shredded onion,
is as bitter as my sadness in the dark.
1924
The Last One
Evening sun.
And all the flies in the corners of the windows,
in the evening cold—
congealed—
maybe already dead—
and on the edge of the water glass—the last one,
alone in the whole room—and
I say, “Sing me something about your distant homeland,
dear fly.”
I hear her weeping as she answers me.
May her right foot wither
If she strikes up a tune
By these foreign waters
And if she forgets
That dear dungheap
That once was her homeland—
