The wheels they drag and drag on,
What do they bring, and whose?
They bring along a wagon
Filled with throbbing shoes.

The wagon like a khupa
In evening glow, enchants:
The shoes piled up and heaped up,
Like people in a dance.

A holiday, a wedding?
As dazzling as a ball!
The shoes — familiar, spreading,
I recognize them all.

The heels tap with no malice:
Where do they pull us in?
From ancient Vilna alleys,
They drive us to Berlin.

I must not ask you whose,
My heart, it skips a beat:
Tell me the truth, oh, shoes,
Where disappeared the feet?

The feet of pumps so shoddy,
With buttondrops like dew —
Where is the little body?
Where is the woman too?

All children's shoes — but where
Are all the children's feet?
Why does the bride not wear
Her shoes so bright and neat?

'Mid clogs and children's sandals,
My Mama's shoes I see!
On Sabbath, like the candles,
She'd put them on in glee.

The heels tap with no malice:
Where do they pull us in?
From ancient Vilna alleys,
They drive us to Berlin.

My every breath is a curse.
Every moment I am more an orphan.
I myself create my orphanhood
With fingers, I shudder to see them
Even in dark of night.

Once, through a cobblestone ghetto street
Clattered a wagon of shoes, still warm from recent feet,
A terrifying
Gift from the exterminators…
And among them, I recognized
My Mama's twisted shoe
With blood-stained lips on its gaping mouth.

— Mama, I run after them, Mama,
Let me be a hostage to your love,
Let me fall on my knees and kiss
The dust on your holy throbbing shoe
And put it on, a tfillin on my head,
When I call out your name!

But then all shoes, woven in my tears,
Looked the same as Mama's.
My stretched-out arm dropped back
As when you want to catch a dream.

Ever since that hour, my mind is a twisted shoe.
And as once upon a time to God, I wail to it
My sick prayer and wait
For new torments.
This poem too is but a howl,
A fever ripped out of its alien body.
No one to listen.
I am alone.
Alone with my thirty years.
In their pit they rot —
Those who once were called
Papa.
Mama.
Child.

Vilna Ghetto, July 30, 1943