My Home
Light gray houses swim and sway
along with damp fences, pale silver streets,
and people in doorways
bend, smile, fade away,
emerge and disappear,
through this rainbow of tears.
A girl sits by her window.
In the moonlight her hair streams like dark rain.
She searches with eyes stubborn and bright,
as if through a forest,
for her own distant figure.
Oh, child, why do you shiver
at my approach?
Girls in Crotona Park
Girls have woven themselves
into the autumn evening
as into a faded image.
Their eyes are cold, their smiles thin and wild.
Their clothes are lavender, apple green and old rose.
Through their veins dew flows.
They exchange words that are bright and empty.
In dreams they were loved by Botticelli.
From a Letter
The dusty road
the drunken steps…
My one and only,
I don’t remember it.
The twilight like masses of flowers,
the twilight like the October-forest,
when he was coming.
The dusty road,
the harvested field,
the staggering steps…
Without limit, without end
joy was growing…
My shining one,
I don’t remember it.
The Sun
I know, that the sun is God’s golden mask.
Often I become calm and good,
when my blood races with madness and disgust–
God smiles at me from behind his mask.
It may happen, in a heavy, golden green garden,
the sung will hang, like a fruit on a tree.
Once, I tasted there
in a radiant hour,
its juice in my mouth.
And sometimes, at evening, on the sea,
it is a fiery swan.
Once, white and erect,
with a silver horn between my lips
I rode on its back.
Unhappy
…And these people stare at me crookedly,
one might as well burst into tears…
I am unhappy with my furnished room,
I am unhappy with everything.
Swayed today on a strap on the el,
in rhythm with worn-down Jews.
The night was dark, like a slave’s heart.
I am unhappy with these nights.
And the days are yellow and holy,
like verses in an old book of prayers,
perhaps I wouldn’t feel so terrible,
if I didn’t dream up poetry.