The Song Remains
דאָס ליד איז געבליבן
Welcome to our collection of Yiddish poems with English translations from Nazi German occupied Poland. We’ll be publishing one new poem per week into 2027, so be sure to subscribe to get free weekly updates.
Borekh Olitsky (Baruch Olitsky)
Not prophets, apostles
not extinguished suns
not unfortunate mountains and valleys
have come to warn, to tell –
quiet, simple folk representations
brothers with hammers, sheers, awls
have printed the warning signs
and posted them on streets and corners
brothers probably stand now behind bars
like stunned pale statues
and may be mistaken
their bones are already overgrown with grass
let’s not go there
Tonight, in a dream
there came to me
a young lover
who tenderly look me by the hand
A fiddle is playing in a country green
Where I am not and will never be
A sunny house is blossoming in a white land
Where I am not and will never be
Every day, every plain day
my blood shivers in my body
every day, every ordinary day
my blood responds to a call
A wave inside echoes in my blood
like a bell – in the night – so bright
the world hangs in troubled pain of the world
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oh, poor foolish singer
you are not yet good at your work
Does your song echo there?
you crawl only to wealthy yards
A
Like fish with mother of pearl
clouds swim in the cool sky
and from their feathers flow
drip drops clouded with the sun
into the dark mouth of earth
A bright lit swallow circles quietly up and up
hooked on a circling whirlwind
Every tree is loaded with green earth
with blue joy and secrets from the West.
Spring-life! Look, look:
You are being welcomed by White Russian towns
with pails empty to their bottom
Unemployment greets you keeping track
with froth on mouth where hungry children
with blistered skin and dark worms’ nest
stick into the walls of the closets
B
A loud radio delivers to the open palms of leaves
through air and streets throughout the world
with grey sacks behind eyes with fevered fingers
to choke someone’s neck…
Young folks drink every evening on this street, the wine
from Barcelona and sing Yiddish folk songs in Minsk
And the last bit of joy jumps out of
naked skin and runs barefoot on steps
to peacock ends of flying stars, bursting suddenly
filled with provocation
with bloody terror
and with the sparkle of a leper’s eye.
Zdziecioł (Zhetl / Dyatlovo) 1937
(more…)The noisemaker knocks
we can hardly hear
past the din
people what we dream
My dress is loose
and moves that way and this
And becomes a
wild crimson mess
Love have I for all that lives in song
Birds, women in blue hats
A tree, a street, a wall
All that is familiar and what’s not
And what is past and what will be:
Jericho’s walls
Lemberger wind that rushes in my ears
And the clever silent stone
That will someday mark my grave
Because all that lives is resisting death
(He breaths through the nostrils of black burial horses,
and blushes passionately in dusky red)
Therefore, these are good:
The birds, the young women in blue hats
The blood
And headstones in cemeteries covered with light fallen snow.
Jews, let us be cheerful!
It won’t be long, I hope —
The war will soon be over,
And soon their end will come.
Be cheerful and don’t worry!
Don’t carry on in grief;
Have patience and have confidence —
Take hard times in your stride.