Archive >VOL. 20, NO. 1

Jacob Glatshteyn
Translated from the Yiddish by Marc Kaminsky

Good Night, World

Good night, wide world,
great stinking world.
Not you, but I slam the gate.
With the long gabardine,
with the burning yellow patch,
with proud footsteps,
by my own commandment,
I’m going back to the ghetto.
Wipe out, stamp out all traces of apostasy.
I roll around in your rubbish
with praise, praise, praise,
hunchbacked Jewish life.
And you, world, I excommunicate,
with your contaminated cultures.
Although everything is devastated,
I immerse myself in your dust,
sad Jewish life.

German pig, hateful Pole,
Amalekite thief, Rumania, land of guzzling and gorging.
Flabby democracies, with your cold-
sympathy compresses.
Good night, electrified arrogant world.
Back to my kerosene, tallow shadows,
eternal October, minute stars,
to my crooked streets, humpbacked street-lights,
my repository of crumbling holy pages, my Tanakh,
my Gemaras, back to difficult
Talmudic questions, to illuminating Yiddish
translations of sacred Hebrew texts,
to rabbinic law, to deep meaning, to duty, to justice —
world, I walk with joy to the quiet ghetto light.

Good night. I give you, world, a gift
of all my liberators.
Take back your Jesumarxists, choke on their audacity.
Let a drop of our baptized blood obliterate you.
And I have hope, although the Messiah tarries;
day-in-and-day-out my expectation grows.
Green leaves will rustle
on our tree, although it’s withered.
I don’t need any consolation.
I’m going back to all
that I need in this world — four cubits
on which to learn Torah.

From Wagner’s idol-worshipping music
to humming wordless melodies —
I kiss you, unkempt Jewish life.
Within me cries the joy of coming back.

April 1938