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.
A golden day mid-week —
and what else would maidens seek?
“Mushroom gathering we will go!”
Baskets rustle and pink cheeks glow.
They sing of joy and how bright the sun,
they gather together and do a count:
the magnate’s woods is divvied up.
There’s chatter and a meeting’s set
a plot of land for each girl’s basket,
a plot of forest-loneliness.
They join up, split and disperse.
A forest seemingly empty, still,
yet pulsing with life and truly filled!
Between hills and above valleys stars
glittered late into the night,
and I arrived at a cottage that,
like a shriveled mushroom,
stood in the middle of the marketplace,
its low threshold, a smooth stone,
and its walls, enchanted and white.
An eternal flame was lit inside,
and a gilded bird had its wings outspread,
and a flower grew in an earthen pot,
its crown, like green velvet, stretched wide.
But its soil had become parched,
so with a pitcher in hand
I watered the thirsty soil,
and I watered the thirsty stem,
and with the pitcher I sang
a song of love and eternity.
Work, girlies, work!
Work through day and night;
sew up blouses, little frocks,
then dress up to the nines!
Time for me to get going…
enough playing the fool:
sitting around and hoping
for a hot glance from you.
Roze Perets-Laks (1894-1941?) was born in Puławy (Pulavi), in the Lublin district of Poland. She studied dentistry in Warsaw, and later practised as a dentist there. During her time in Warsaw, she spent time in the home of her father’s cousin, the iconic Yiddish writer and poet I L Peretz, and later wrote a memoir about him, Arum Perets (Around Peretz). She married the sculptor Aleksander Laks in 1923, and moved to Vilna, where she lived until the Nazis murdered her in c1941. She published many poems in a variety of publications.
Source: Congress for Jewish Culture
Chaim Semiatitski (Khayim Semiatitsky)
In my shabby home my kingdom blooms.
Daily at the window dawn arrives
with a tiding that the sky is now clad in blue.
I fill my eyes with blue to the brim
and like a banner, out in the world
I brandish them.
Evening arrives at
the river’s shore in rose slippers
tells the white geese to go to sleep
and corrals a herd of stars
to bathe in the river.
And then it stands
and washes its dark face
in the wind and waves
till morning.
/MK
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