Tell me, brother, our dog's struggle
What does it mean?
Our heart's gone mad.
All words fled —
Bees from a hive embraced by smoke.
But in a backstreet of the mind,
Still throbs
A flickering nerve saved from destruction,
A last groan
Defying that blind silence
Sealed by a handful of earth.

Who are we? What is
The sense of our suffering?
If only
To be victims of a bloodthirsty lord —
Let frogs be born instead of us!
The tongue is swollen with the rusty promise
That wolf and lamb will dwell together.
As a child resembles father-mother, we
Inherit the resemblances of generations' plague,
Of being waiters at the world's set table,
Grateful for a coin tossed to us.
Is this the golden chain that binds two thousand years,
The tear chain burdening our souls?

It seems, just yesterday, forms lost their measure,
Abysses straightened out their hunchback necks
And covered the unburied skulls of generations With hope —
And we were ready
To accept the blooming wounds as medals,
Boast of them in a pagan parade:
— Ho, ho, we too take part in the dream-plundering,
With our blood, pay dues to revolutions!
We, we.
But a lion overlooks the branch-covered pit
Lurking at his paws.

Today — at dusk, in a circle,
Around bonfire's coppery wings,
Under whips of steel guards,
At the laughter of yesterday's comrade —
Naked, with striped backs,
We dance: I in the middle.
With our own hands, we are forced
To tear the silver parchment
And toss into the bonfire
Like our own limbs, singing
Happy Russian songs.
Look! Between sword and sheath
The voice of paradise looms,
Letters from Babylon flutter,
Inscribed on the blackboard of night.
And farther, on high coils —
Rising, the 'I am'
From a consumed parchment,
And nothing —
He too went up in smoke.

Circle, circle, dancing round,
If you have a feeling — burn it,
If there is a bath in hell,
This is where it will be found.

And without a stick the lame
And the rabbi — blind and old,
They're all hopping in a ring
For the joy and for the game.

Peasant woman hops to see:
What a circus, God is One!
Says a neighbor: Pay them stones,
For a circus costs a fee.

One whore points out in the clatter
To another: See them naked!
Stones are falling. Fire devours.
Climbs a sheygets on a ladder.

Rabbi falls with stones that fall,
Kissing sparks in ashes flying.
And his Sh'ma is drowning too
In the coldness of the All.

And I, who was the clown in that disgraceful spectacle,
Had no courage to stammer a curse,
No strength to throw myself into the death,
As did my brothers in the time of Hadrian the Roman
When faith stifled in their body all the pain
(Though my heart is poisoned with coal glow
And the eyes of my spirit are speared with smoke).
Worse: I knelt naked before him,
Who defied my father in his grave,
And with tears like black pox,
I begged for mercy.

Cursed one! Where is your old shield
That bent the spears of nations?
The colors of that image, don't they reach you?
The blood of your forefathers, was it never revealed?

This is your punishment: to gasp half dead,
Gulping death rattles of your brothers, insane.
For you have not deserved the last bread
Of joy: being naught — which means: becoming again.

Written in a hiding place, early July 1941