2 Form Among Yiddish Poets 

Hirsh Glik, even in the death camps, polished his poems, weighing out their iambic meter. Iambs suit this poem, which is hopeful, even eye-to-eye with death. ^{5 5}  The poem from which these stanzas were excerpted became a well-known song of Jewish resistance, written after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and adopted as the official anthem of the Vilna Partisans.

  ˘        ᐟ       ˘        ᐟ   ˘      ᐟ         ˘      ᐟ  ˘     ᐟ 
Don’t call this present path your final way:  
Blue skies will soon break through these cloudy days!  
The hour we have longed for can’t be far— 
our marching steps declare that we are here. 

Under palm trees and in fields of gleaming snow,
we persist despite our anguish and our woe,
and from whatever ground is watered with our blood,  
we will spring up even stronger and more bold. ^{6 6}  Hirsh Glik, “Partisaner Lid,” in Lider fun getos un lagern [Songs from ghettos and camps], ed. Shmerke Kaczerginski (Tsiko, 1948), 3.

    ˘     ˘       ᐟ          ˘    ᐟ      ˘      ᐟ            ˘       ᐟ       ˘      ᐟ 
(zog nit KEYN mol AZ du GEYST dem LETS-tn VEG) 
Zog nit keyn mol as du geyst dem letstn veg,
himlen blayene farshteln bloye teg;
kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho,
s’vet a poyk ton undzer trot, mir zaynen do.

Fun grinem palmenland biz vaysn land fun shney,
mir zaynen do mit undzer payn, mit undzer vey
un vu gefaln s’iz a shprits fun undzer blut,
vet nokh a shprots ton undzer gvure, undzer mut.

The poet Osher Shvartsman, who fell on the battlefields of Ukraine in 1919 at the age of thirty, was a master of meter. Here is a stanza of his in victorious iambs, written when he was a cavalry rider: 

     ˘           ᐟ          ˘       ᐟ
Quick! Mount your horse
and steel your arm—  
your spear and sword
are now a flag! ^{7 7} Osher Schvartzman, “Der soyne bay di toyern [the Enemy at the Gates],” in Lider fun der milkhome anthologie [Anthology of poems from the war], ed. I. Kissin (Bibliotek fun poezye un eseyen, 1943), 36. 

  ˘     ᐟ            ˘        ᐟ    
(af GIKH tsum FERD)
Af gikh tsum ferd
di hant shtol on
s’iz itst di shverd,
di shpiz—a fon.

The anapest is a foot with three syllables, with the stress on the third syllable. The Roman poets mostly used this meter in drama. In English, classic poets such as Byron, Scott, Browning, and Swinburne delighted in the anapest: it was a way for them to express zest, dance, tumult. Yiddish poets used the anapest in the exact opposite way, in sorrow and elegy. Here is an extraordinary example of the always-amorous poetess Anna Margolin (who wrote under the name Rosa Lebensboym and used to publish in Tog under the pseudonym Clara Levin ^{8 8}  Katz seems to have misremembered this information: Rosa Lebensboym is actually the given name of the poet who published under the pen name Anna Margolin. She did write journalistic articles for Der Tog under the name Clara Levin and occasionally Sofia Brandt. ) from her elegaic poem “Mari and Death.” ^{9 9}   This poem is from Margolin’s Mary cycle, which transgressively steps into the voice of the Christian Virgin Mary. In Yiddish, however, the name would have been pronounced “Ma-REE”, with the stress on the second syllable. Because this excerpt is intended as a demonstration of the anapest, I have used a version of the name closer to the original pronunciation, transliterating rather than translating it. Several other translations of Margolin’s Mary cycle exist, including by Shirley Kumove (Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin, SUNY Press, 2005) and Kathryn Hellerstein (A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586–1987, Stanford University Press, 2014). Hellerstein has also written about the process of translating Anna Margolin in an article entitled “Translating as a Feminist: Reconceiving Anna Margolin” (Prooftexts 20, no. 1–2 [2000]). Footnote 9 of that article has a helpful discussion of the significance of the name Mari and considers different ways of rendering it in English. The poem is so clear in its rhythm, meter, and weight that it’s not necessary to use the signs ˘ ˘ ᐟ to demonstrate the anapest, with its stress on the third syllable: ^{10 10}  The translator has applied the scansion marks below, which did not appear in the Yididsh original.

    ˘       ˘  ᐟ     ˘      ˘      ᐟ     ˘   ˘       ᐟ       ˘  ˘    ᐟ
Then Mari said goodbye to her brightly lit house,  
gave a nod to the walls—a quick nod, and then—off! 
She went into the night as if into the woods, 
where God’s breath feels quite close, and each shadow sparks fear. 
And after her tumbled a merry bright band 
of penniless drunkards and prodigal sons. ^{11 11}  Anna Margolin, “Mari un der toyt [Mari and Death]”  in Lider [Poems] (Orion Press, 1929), 113.

   ˘     ˘      ᐟ    ˘      ˘       ᐟ           ˘   ˘     ᐟ        ˘   ˘    ᐟ
(S’hot ma-RI zikh ge-ZEGNT mit-n LIKH-ti-kn HOYZ)
S’hot Mari zikh gezegnt mitn likhtikn hoyz
far di vent zikh geneygt, geneygt un aroys,
un avek in der nakht, vi men geyt in a vald
vu gots otem iz noent un s’shrekt yede geshtalt
un gegangen nokh ir zaynen freylekh un bunt
betler un shiker un vagabund.

The dactylic meter also has three syllables, but it’s the exact opposite of the anapest. The stress falls on the first syllable instead of the third. Dactyl means a finger, but it would be more accurate to say a bent finger, because when we bend our finger we see three joints, like three syllables: the first joint is pointed, accented, like the first syllable of the dactyl, but the other two are bent, not emphasized: ᐟ ˘ ˘. 

Our folk musicians have unknowingly created folksongs in all sorts of meters. Here is a stanza from a folksong in a dactylic meter: 

  ᐟ        ˘     ˘
Come to me, 
Sorele.
I long for you,  
little love.

    ᐟ         ˘   ˘          ᐟ    ˘  ˘
(KUM tsu mir / SO-re-le)
Kum tsu mir
Sorele,
kh’benk nokh dir,
libinke

Now let’s dwell on the triolet for a little while. I can’t help but at least mention the master of the triolet, Leyb Naydus. The triolet has eight lines, the fourth and seventh line identical to the first and the second line repeating itself in the eighth. For mechanical poetasters, the repetitions become slaves to the form, but Leyb Naydus’s triolet is like a symphony.

Elul

A stern and golden sorrow filters in 
from outside through the shining windowpane.
through crimson leaves and glowing motes of dust, 
a stern and golden sorrow filters in.  
The poplar by the window’s grumbling 
as if whispering to someone, “Don’t believe!” 
A stern and golden sorrow filters in 
from outside through the empty windowpane.

A shtrenge, goldene atsves kukt araynet
fun droysn durkh der blankendiker shoyb.
Fun purpur-bleter un fun geln shtoyb.
A shtrenge, goldene atsves kukt araynet.
Bam shoyb der topol flistert vos un taynet, 
vi er volt vemen aynroymen: “nisht gloyb!”
A shtrenge, goldene atsves kukt araynet
fun droysn durkh der blankendiker shoyb. ^{12 12}  First-line metrical notation is not included for this and the following citations, because Katz is discussing their form rather than their meter.

And does anyone remember Fradl Shtok anymore? The long-forgotten poetess who linked the fates of man and beast in her poems, who heard a child’s cry in a tomcat’s yowl, who saw a hanged man in the lamplight’s flicker and the wind’s wail, and who confided in the dusk:

I am lonely thus
lonely enough to die.     

Umetik is mir azoy,
umetik tsum shtarbn.

In joy as well as sorrow, she could feel, with her sensitive faculties, how God ripened corn in the fields, and described in “The Shepherd’s Song” how the juice ran like red wine “from cherries ripe to bursting.” But when she felt lonely, she’d speak of herself to the bee: 

I know you have no honey left, 
you want to give me poison. ^{13 13}  Fradl Shtok, “Farnakhtn [Twilights]”, in Yidishe Dikterins [Yiddish Women Writers], ed. Ezra Korman (L. M. Stein, 1928), 96–7.

Ikh veys du host keyn honik nisht, 
du vilst di gift mir gebn.

Fradl Shtok, like Leyb Naydus, like scores of other vibrant Yiddish poets, abandoned her poems, her goods and possessions, to God’s care. Whom does it concern that these poets, who should have taken their rightful place of honor by the eastern wall ^{14 14} The mizrekh-vant or eastern wall of the synagogue marked the direction congregants would face in prayer and often featured decorative plaques reading “mizrekh.”  of our poetics, are disintegrating into earth and ashes? 

It’s worth noting that Fradl Shtok was one of the first to introduce the sonnet into Yiddish poetry. I’ve had my copy of the sonnet which I cite below since I was young. By now, the paper is so yellowed and brittle that time has cut off its title, like a severed head. Her sonnet will soon be a pile of dust. See? Even poems are among the yordey ofer, those who return to the dust. 

So should I find myself some secret nest, 
to weep in silence with my head bent low, 
to dry my tired eyes a thousand times— 
the eyes that never, never close in rest? 

And should I let my gaze wander away, 
as it has before, to the gray distance,
and cast my frantic glance in all directions, 
a sick and restless search for happiness? 

Should I hurl myself straight into madness, 
standing in the street, my eyes on fire, 
roaring like a wounded lioness?

The breath in my flared nostrils flies away— 
so should I find myself some secret nest 
to weep in silence with my head bent low? ^{15 15}  Fradl Shtok, “Sonnet 4,” in Antologye finf hundert yor idishe poezye [Anthology of five hundred years of Yiddish poetry], ed. Morris Bassin (Dos Bukh, 1917), 301. Also appears in Yidishe dikhterins [Yiddish Women Writers], ed. Ezra Korman (L. M. Stein, 1928), 100. 

Tsi zol ikh mikh farborgn ergets vu
un veynen shtil, dem kop aropgeboygn; 
un oysvishn tsurik di mide oygn
vos hobn keyn mol, keyn mol nisht keyn ru.

Un lozn vandern avek mayn blik, 
vi biz aher in groye, groye vaytn; 
un varfn im dernokh af ale zaytn, 
in kranker umru, yogn zikh nokh glik. 

Tsi zol ikh mikh a vorf ton vild arayn, 
in mitn gas, mit ongetsundene oygn
un brumen vi a tigerin fun payn.

Di dukhendike nozlekher tsefloygn— 
tsi zol ikh ergets vu farborgn zayn 
un veynen shtil, dem kop aropgeboygn.

It seems to me that the neglected poets Leyb Neydus and Fraydl Shtok thank me, even from their graves, for unearthing even a line of their poetry from the darkness, so that they, dead and forgotten poets, might catch even the slightest glimmer of light from an extinguished generation. 

The impulse to write is strong for gifted poets, even when they write only for the wind. The poetess Rive Kviatkovska proved this when face to face with death in the Nazi murder-camps: Auschwitz, Stuthof, and Kokoshki, near Gdansk. Even with her hands and feet amputated ^{16 16}  There is no evidence to support Katz’s claim that Kviatkovska’s hands and feet were amputated, though after the liberation of the concentration camps she was hospitalized with frostbitten hands for almost a year. (perhaps, like the paralyzed poet Chaim Krol, she held the pen in her mouth), she wrote her poem, “The Prayer of a Ghetto-Jew,” in Whitmanesque free verse, begging God to be transformed into a horse, a dog, a stone—anything but a human being.  

Mighty God,  
transform me into a stone.  
But human? 
I’m done being human. ^{17 17}  Rivka Kviatkowski Pinchasik, “Onshtot a hakdome” [Instead of an introduction], in Hent [Hands] (Os Cooperative Press, 1956), 6. According to a note in that publication, the poem itself was written in the Łódź Ghetto in 1942.

Groyser got,
farvandl mikh in a shteyn,
nor a mentsh,
a mentsh kon ikh nit zayn.

3 Meter in Nature

The same meters that are found in poetry are also found in nature. 

It is now the spring of 1990. I listen to the meters of the rivulet across the road from our country house. The waters hurry to announce to every living thing that the season of bloom, light, joy has arrived. The stream speaks in the meter I A M B, in the voice of the Song of Songs. 

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,
for your love surpasses even wine. 

I liken my love to a bundle of myrrh— 
may he nestle all night between my breasts. ^{18 18}  Songs of Songs 1:2–3. The Yiddish version of the Song of Songs that Katz cites here is his own translation, published in Der posheter kholem [The Simple Dream], (New York, 1947), 109–110.

  ˘     ᐟ       ˘         ᐟ      ˘      ᐟ      ˘     ᐟ     ˘       ᐟ      ˘           ᐟ
(zol ER mikh KU-shn MIT di KU-shn FUN zayn MOYL)
Zol er mikh kushn mit di kushn fun zayn moyl,
vayl beser iz dayn libe fun vayn.

A bunt mire iz mir mayn getrayer,
tsvishn mayne brist zol er nekhtikn. 

Each spring, I hear the stream speak in iambs, telling all sorts of stories about the waters that have run past before now, and the waters that will flow into the springtimes to come. The stories that the stream tells in springtime are pure joy. The iamb, the two-syllable foot—unstressed, stressed—is as hopeful as the rivulet in spring.

But the autumn rivulet flows sadly past in trochees: stressed, unstressed.

Someone in a joyful mood walks in an iambic meter. Indeed, think of the celebratory gait of a girl who has just now seen her beloved and left with a promise that he will love her until the end of the ages. The iamb is delighted to walk in the footsteps of a maiden so in love. 

It is not only people who are poets, but also bats, dogs, nightingales. Bats chirp their songs in trochees as they flit from the abandoned ruins of Tsfat, through the fantastical twilights of Galilee. Homeless hounds howl their song to the moon in dactyls, the lonely sound of all wanderers: 

   ᐟ   ˘     ˘     ᐟ     ˘   ˘
Ha-oo-oo, ha-oo-oo!

The iamb and anapest are hopeful meters in nature, just as they are in poetry. The trochee and dactyl, meanwhile, accompany sorrow and loneliness. 

To whom do nightingales sing their songs of iambs and trochees, if not to poets such as Leyb Naydus, Fraydl Shtok, Mani Leyb, John Keats? 

The raven, a graphomaniac like the cricket or the parakeet, was transformed into a mystical poet in the vision of Edgar Allan Poe, tirelessly croaking the only word she knows throughout the night in trochees:  

    ᐟ       ˘        ᐟ       ˘       ᐟ 
Keynmol, keynmol . . . nit!
Never—nevermore! 

The raven’s call is the only answer to all the questions of the bereaved lover, who mourns the death of his beloved whom the angels named Lenore. That black bird croaks back in trochee. 

The iamb is primarily linked with joy, the trochee with despair. Wedding guests walk, laugh, and dance in iambs. Mourners at a funeral lament, weep, tear their clothes in trochees. 

Try throwing a stone up a mountain, and you will hear it clatter its way to the top in iambs: 

˘   ᐟ       ˘   ᐟ
Aroyf! Aroyf!
Ascend! Ascend!

And you will hear the stone fall all the way down in trochees: 

  ᐟ      ˘     ᐟ     ˘
Oy vey, oy vey!

I have taught myself to understand the tongue of stones. I hear them converse. When a stone lies untouched, it’s a mute poet. But when a man, a beast, a storm disturbs the stone, it comes alive, gains speech, learns to speak all sorts of languages in addition to its own language: stone-language. 

Stones have a stony destiny. We overlook the goodness in them. With stones you can build houses, gravestones, palaces. 

In my aunt Belke’s legends, stones move according to their own volition, stones      constantly dream of walking and running. She used to say: “No moss grows on a running stone. Stones will not always beget stones. When Moshiach comes, a stone will give birth to a new Adam.” Blumele, the beggar girl, used to disagree with my Aunt Belke. She used to go around all the streets and alleys of Michaleshik, singing: 

Did a stone give birth to me, then?  
Did I really have no mother at all? 

Tsi den bin ikh fun a shteyn geborn?
Tsi den hot mikh keyn mame gehat? 

Note: The proofs of this work reached Menke Katz in his country house in Spring Glen, New York, on Wednesday, the 24th of April 1991, on the very day of his sudden death. He was unable to read the proofs to revise and make corrections here and there, as he had intended to do. The printed version is faithful to what the author’s hand wrote, with corrections that the author had outlined on earlier typewritten versions. The only thing that the author did not have time to make known was the title of this work, which he should have established on that day. The editor gave it a title that we hope reflects its content, knowing that the author would certainly have given it a more literary name. —The Editor ^{19 19}  Menke’s son Dovid Katz is the editor of this volume and author of this note.