Borekh Olitzki (Baruch Olitzky)

My simple sisters,
my shepherdesses and seamstresses
with their blond braids
call to me from the sidewalks of Łodz
to make benches and straw roofs.
Bunched up on bundles
of the September amber
and the sway of dahlias,
they stretch their hands in supplication
to the dusky profile of my name:
who will play on bleeding panpipes
the sadness of captivated flocks
and the groans of hinges
when bad folk take the gold
of wheat and corn?

Sisters, my sisters,
a worker’s knife with a siren’s wail
cut out and placed my heart
in the grey empty pockets –
how can I go home now?
Like the slobbering throats
of concealed criminals,
chimneys have today frothed
dark foams up to the sun –
a spittoon at the corner of the horizon –
who will rescue the sun?
Soon, in the moon’s image over the city,
will rise the pale hungry spinner woman
crucified on the weaver’s stool
by a dark cloud.
Whose lips will absorb the prayers –
locks of her hair unraveled, of her pain?

Sisters, my sisters!
Paint for me for the last time
a fir-forest turning green,
with ants and lizards caught
in the shadowy net of its branches;
a pure pond that throws rings of diamonds
before the trembling, sad willow-fingers
in the wind
and flees, flees
to the villages of White Russia,
Lithuania, and Volin.

Translated by Miri Koral