I encoun­tered the work of the Pol­ish-Cana­di­an poet Rokhl Korn (1898−1982) only recent­ly, in a trans­la­tion class on women’s Yid­dish poetry. ^{1 1} The class was called ​“Froyen lid­er” and taught by Mindl Cohen.
We read two of her poems and heard a record­ing of her read­ing ​“Fun yen­er zayt lid.” I was deeply moved by her voice, her Yid­dish, and the poem, which ends on the image of a moth­er lost in thought in a door­way before call­ing her daugh­ter in for the night. When I learned that Korn had pub­lished pro­lif­i­cal­ly (includ­ing eight books of poet­ry) but remained lit­tle translated, ^{2 2} Note from the edi­tors: In addi­tion to a small num­ber of col­lec­tions of poet­ry and prose in trans­la­tion (Lid­er un erd/​Shirim ve-Adamah (Poems and Land) (Yiddish/​Hebrew). Trans. Shimshon Meltzer, 1966; Gen­er­a­tions: Select­ed Poems of Rokhl Korn. Trans. R. Augen­feld, S. Mayne et al, 1982; Paper Ros­es: Select­ed Poems of Rokhl Korn, trans. Sey­mour Lev­i­tan, 1985) Korn’s poet­ry has been wide­ly anthol­o­gized. A list of those pub­li­ca­tions can be found here. More recent­ly, sev­er­al poems by Korn have been trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by Miri­am Isaacs and pub­lished on the web­site of the Yid­dish Book Cen­ter. I start­ed read­ing more of her writ­ing. One of these works, Bash­ertkeyt, pub­lished in 1949 in Mon­tréal by a com­mit­tee of poets (Masha Roskies, Ida Maze, and Melekh Rav­itch among them), opens with the theme of benk­shaft (long­ing and home­sick­ness). The poems are often addressed to a dis­tant beloved, with hope that he is on his way back, and per­haps even nearby.

The poem from this col­lec­tion that I trans­late here, ​“Ikh volt gevolt amol dayn mamen zen,” deliv­ers (in only 17 lines!) the com­plex­i­ty of an imag­ined rela­tion­ship between two women who have in com­mon their love for the same man, son to one, part­ner to the oth­er. The speak­er wish­es to have seen her lover’s moth­er once, and con­jures up such a meet­ing in which the two com­mune about the son in mere glances.

Extra­or­di­nary sight becomes the dri­ving idea of this poem. The won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive and impos­si­ble to trans­late Yid­dish word ​“blik” appears in the first and last stan­zas. In the first stan­za, when Korn intro­duces these silent com­mu­ni­ca­tions, she begins with ​“oygn” then ends on ​“blik.” I resigned myself to the imper­fect ​“gaze.” When the sec­ond ​“blik” appears in the third stan­za, I repli­cat­ed the ​“eyes” from the first to accom­pa­ny ​“gaze,” to empha­size the pow­er­ful word­less exchange between these women.

At some point between drafts of the trans­la­tion, Korn’s ​“eyes” and ​“blik” inspired my own (much lighter!) poem about a mother’s eyes. I have been writ­ing four­teen-line son­nets with no stan­za breaks. Under the influ­ence of Korn’s struc­ture, I start­ed with a qua­train as she does, added two more, and end­ed up with a son­net of three qua­trains and a clos­ing cou­plet. Re-read­ing my trans­la­tion of the Korn poem, I felt the urge to set off her pow­er­ful end­ing lines as a cou­plet too. 

I am grate­ful to Dr. Allan Coop­er­smith for grant­i­ng me per­mis­sion to trans­late his grandmother’s work. I am also grate­ful to Maya Paster­nak of the Jew­ish Pub­lic Library in Mon­tréal for direct­ing my query to the right per­son, and to Miri­am Isaacs for assist­ing with locat­ing the heirs.

Click here to down­load a PDF of the text and translation.