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Mr Kissin's CD "On The Keys of Yiddish Poetry"is yet another affirmation of his diverse interests, heritage, accomplishments and artistic talents.  First posted on his official website, many fans were interested to have English translations of as many poems as possible to enable a wider audience the benefit of appreciating their astounding beauty and profundity.  A project was undertaken whereby Mr Kissin provided us with the relevant and readily available translations you see on this webpage. Personally, I am deeply indepted to Mr Kissin's generosity in allowing me to showcase these to you on this unofficial fansite under proviso of source linkbanks to his official website. I hope you too will derive great pleasure from becoming acquainted with them and that they will inspire you.


 
 Evgeny Kissin's Latest CD 2010

On The Keys of Yiddish Poetry
Poems by Yiddish Poets Read by Evgeny Kissin
 To purchase please
Click Here

אויף די קלאַווישן פֿון ייִדישער פּאָעזיע




More poems will be added when and if translations become available   

 

Evgeny Reciting Various Poems


The Yiddish Words from your Mouth


The Yiddish words from your mouth
Flutter out like a dove,
Soulfully gentle
And full of charm.
Once upon a time, a purified tear
Rose up to the heavens above.
O dear friend of mine!

The Yiddish words from your mouth
Blossom on the shore
Of silvery pure waters,
Or sometimes grow
In songs and stories.
O dear friend of mine!

The Yiddish words from your mouth
Are not just words –
They are anger, sorrow, and tears,
And the laughter
Of little children.
Through you,
A generation speaks from the grave
The words it did not get to speak.
O dear friend of mine.

© Polia Shapiro

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I am Playing the Piano



I am playing the piano,
My fingers echo across the keys,
Agitated by the music,
They feel pain and fill with light.
I am playing the piano,
I know not the lyrics,
I know not the notes,
But I feel odd
Hearing the sound
Which has filled my home.
It opens windows wide,
Its whirl is making the trees dizzy,
It has mixed up night and day,
This secret sound.
I am playing the piano,
My fingers falter quietly,
It is the music of the Universe,
It feels cramped in my home.

© Nika Turbina


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On the Other Side of the Poem

On the other side of the poem there’s an orchard –
And in the orchard a house with a straw thatch;
Three silent pine trees are standing there,
There guardians forever keeping watch.
On the other side of the poem there’s a bird,
A brown-yellow bird with a reddish breast
That returns here every winter
And hangs like a bud on the naked bush.
On the other side of the poem there’s a path
Narrow and steep, the thinnest silver,
And someone who’s lost her way in time
Comes, quiet, barefoot, to haunt me there.
On the other side of the poem there may be
A miracle. But today is dreary and grey;
A feverish longing for an amazing hour
Flutters against my window pane.
On the other side of the poem my mother
Stands on the threshold, stands in thought
And calls me home as of old, as of old:
You’ve played long enough! Can’t you see it’s night?

© Rokhl Korn
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Evge
ny Reciting Poem at the Verbier Festival 2006


My poems are a heavy burden-
Like stones carried uphill.
I shall walk with them to the cliff,
Until I walk no more
I'll bury my face in the grass,
And run out of tears.
I shall tear up my line --
The poem shall weep.
Searing pain cutting through my palm-
'tis stinging nettle's bite!
The bitterness of my day
Turns into words and disappears.


by Nika Turbina




Sometimes I want to go up



Sometimes I want to go up
On tiptoe
To a strange house
And feel the walls with my hands –
What kinds of clay is baked in the bricks,
What kind of wood is in the door,
And what kind of god has pitched his tent here,
To guard it from misfortune and ruin?

What kind of swallow under the roof
Has build its nest from straw and earth,
And what kind of angels disguised as men
Came here as guests?

What holy men came out to meet them,
Bringing them basins of water
To wash the dust from their feet,
The dust of earthly roads?
And what blessing did they leave
The children – from big to small,
That it could protect and guard them
From Belzhets, Maidanek, Treblinka?

From just such a house,
Fenced in with a painted railing,
On the middle of trees and blossoming flowerbeds,
Blue, gold, flame,
There came out –
The murderer of my people,
Of my mother.

I’ll let my sorrow grow
Like Samson’s hair long ago,
And I’ll turn the millstone of days
Around this bloody track.

Until one night
When I hear over me
The murderer’s drunken laugh,
I’ll tear the door from its hinges
And I’ll rock the building –
Till the night wakes up
From the shaking coming through every pane,
Every brick, every nail, every board of the house,
From the very ground to the roof –
Although I know, I know, my God,
That the falling walls
Will bury only me
And my sorrow.

© Rokhl Korn


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The Stage 
To Zhenya Kissin



“May God be with you!” – not yet our salvation,
But clearly we sense the coming End,
With reckless thrall of inspiration
And sacrificial meekness of the Lamb.
The stage. Its shape is finely chiselled,
The piano is my steed, lathered to rage by silence,
And rearing to touch your souls with magic,
To reign supreme over the fierce crowd.
To become one with music – and to exit thus,
Beyond the boundless canopy of stars,
Where silence reigns and light,
Where you stand tall, to your full height.

To become one with music – and to exit thus,
Beyond the boundless canopy of stars,
Where silence reigns and light,
Where you stand tall, to your full height.

© Lera Auerbach

kissinwithpiano-1-1.jpg picture by Jamesssnnjms
 


Lera Auerbach on Pushkin



Crumbling Pages


An old prayer-book lies before me,
With yellowed pages,
Dog-eared at prayers about dew and rain,
About the sacrifice of Isaac,
And about Nimrod’s fiery lime-ovens.
Silent tears have fallen there
And made, the pages soft,
The way a heart grows soft from prayer,
And the “let His will be done”‘s are marked with the pointer
And smeared from the repeated reciting.
Who will now carry the prayer-book
God-fearingly under his arm?
And who will leaf through the yellowed pages?
Perhaps I should take it onto my green table
And lay it down in the middle,
And when dryness afflicts my heart,
Bring it to my burning lips.

©  Kadya Molodowsky




(Rev 21:2 NIV) I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband . . .



Artwork : By kind permission of Duncan Long

(Duncan Long emailed:  "Some very nice poetry.
 It is an honor to see my artwork used in this way.")




 From the Yiddish of David Edelstadt


AT STRIFE

Hated are we, and driven from our homes,
Tortured and persecuted, even to blood;
And wherefore? 'Tis because we love the poor,
The masses of mankind, who starve for food.
We are shot down, and on the gallows hanged,
Robbed of our lives and freedom without ruth,
Because for the enslaved and for the poor
We are demanding liberty and truth.
But we will not be frightened from our path
By darksome prisons or by tyranny;
We must awake humanity from sleep,
Yea, we must make our brothers glad and free.
Secure us fast with fetters made of iron,
Tear us like beasts of blood till life departs,
'Tis but our bodies that you will destroy,
Never the sacred spirit in our hearts.
You cannot kill it, tyrants of the earth!
Our spirit is a plant immortal, fair;
Its petals, sweet of scent and rich of hue,
Are scattered wide, are blooming everywhere.
In thinking men and women now they bloom,
In souls that love the light and righteousness.
As they strive on toward duty's sacred goal,
Nature herself doth their endeavor bless—
To liberate the poor and the enslaved
Who suffer now from cold and hunger's blight,
And to create for all humanity
A world that shall be free, that shall be bright;
A world where tears no longer shall be shed,
A world where guiltless blood no more shall flow,
And men and women, like clear-shining stars,
With courage and with love shall be aglow.
You may destroy us, tyrants! 'Twill be vain.
Time will bring on new fighters strong as we;
For we shall battle ever, on and on,
Nor cease to strive till all the world is free!


David Edelstadt

dividers_419.gif picture by Jamesssnnjms


MY WILL

Good friends, when I am dead, bear to my grave
Our banner, freedom's flag of crimson hue,
Stained with the blood poured from the toilers' veins.
There 'neath the crimson banner sing to me
My song, "At Strife," the song of liberty,
That in the hearer's ear clangs like the chains
Of the enslaved, Christian alike and Jew.
E'en in the grave, O brothers, I shall hear
My song of liberty, my stormy lay;
E'en there shall I shed tears for every slave,
Christian or Jew; and when the swords I hear
Clash in the final battle's blood and fear,
Then, singing to the people from my grave,
I will inspire their hearts, that glorious day!


David Edelstadt

Armenian Poems translated by Alice Stone Blackwell



Yad Vashem

A little beyond Mt. Herzl is the Israeli Holocaust museum. Yad Vashem was established by Israeli Law in 1953 to commemorate the six million Jews and their communities wiped out in the Holocaust. It has the largest and the most comprehensive archive and information repositories on the Holocaust, housing more than 50 million pages of documents and hundreds of thousands of photographs and films.

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(Double click on image to view in full-screen mode)


I Dreamt a Dream

 By I. Katzenelson

Translated by Irene Emodi, Tel Aviv


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I dreamt a dream,
Most terrible:
I have no people, my people
Are no longer.

I woke up with a cry-
Alas, alas!
My dream
Has come true!

"God in heaven!"
I tremble and implore:
Why and what for
Did my people die?

Why and what for
Died in vain?
Not in war,
Not in battle . . .

Young boys, old men,
Women and children too -
They are no longer, no longer
Lament !

I am shrouded by sorrow
Day and night
Why, my Master?
Why, oh Lord?

 
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"And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name
 (a "yad vashem")... that shall not be cut off.!

(Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 5)

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"Art is Heaven on earth, to which one never appeals in vain when faced with the oppressions of this world." Franz Liszt

Sonneto 123

Yes, I beheld on earth angelic grace,
And charms divine which mortals rarely see,
Such as both glad and pain the memory;
Vain, light, unreal is all I trace:
Tears I saw shower’d from those fine eyes apace,
Of which the sun ofttimes might envious be;
Accents I heard sighed forth so movingly
As to stay floods, or mountains to displace.
Love and good sense, firmness, with pity join’d
And a wailful grief, a sweeter concert made
Than ever yet was poured on human ear.
And heaven unto the music so inclined
That not a leaf was seen to stir the shade,
Such melody had fraught the winds, the atmosphere.


NOTT

 

.


Yiddish CD English Translations
"On The Keys of Yiddish Poetry"


1. Arn Vergelis
 


  No.1   Idle Curiosity

A synagogue stands in the sky, a church stands on the ground.
   Idly curious, I turn the frame this way, then I  turn the frame that way.

Church bells, the shofar's call, each man enters his own temple,
   Our fathers had a reason to follow their own way.

   God is in Heaven, He knows who is right.
   Idly curious, I turn the frame, take it up and look at it from the back.

   Indeed, the church is still there, and it is given pride of place.
   The synagogue is brushed away, like a pestering child...

   A cathedral stands in Moscow's Kremlin, the synagogue is in a dead-end street.
   Idly curious, I turn the frame, I turn it backwards and 



No. 2. Le théatre de mon âme (translation required)

 
 

No. 3  Kaf Hakal
.


I made a covenant with God,
   He has terrible grief from me,
   Sometimes I act to spite Him,
   Sometimes I call Him Darling God.
   Mama is blessing a candle nearby,
   The light is streaming out of the wick.
   Sometimes I speed to meet my life,
   Sometimes I crawl to meet my death.
   I lied to mama,
   And I am punished by Kaf Hakal.
   Death always leads to ruin,
   Life is a carnival...

((Kaf Hakal - a torture for souls of sinners, when evil spirits torment them by throwing them from side to side)


(Translations by Marina Bower)



2. Boris Mogilner


No. 4.   By the Lake

In the Autumn the water is bitter,
It is redolent of wormwood, it is cool and dark.
The trees are keeping firm watch,
Sunk in cobweb nets.
A quiet song is heard in the forest,
Without birdsong or words.
It disappears softly in the distance,
But it lingers in my sensitive heart.
Autumn is stern but it draws and beguiles me
With delicate bunches of rowan berries,
With mysterious footprints of wild animals
That glitter and shine like colourful leaves on the waves.
The mist creeps over slowly and  silently,
Hoping to shroud the splendour of the season.
But don't despair, just before the rain
The dawn may dare yet to light a Summer bonfire.
You won't see this anywhere else.
My pen shall not shake
When I turn this picture into tidy lines of words,
Although I know that the spark will have gone...

I feel this too may sustain me and make me strong
To take up that beguiling challenge, to follow the voice
That would separate us forever.

(Translation by Marina Bower)



 
No. 5.  Interpreting dreams (translation required)



3. Helpern Leivick
 

No.6   "Forever"

 

The world takes me around with arms long and prickly,
and throws me in pyres that burn all the day.
I burn and I burn but the fires don't consume me —
I pick myself up, stride again on my way.

In fact'ries that I stride through, I fall 'neath the giant wheels.
With courage, I blow up the steam pipes today.
I lay myself down as a brand new foundation —
I pick myself up, stride again on my way.

Just see: now I'm a horse, in harness of leather;
my raging young rider is whipping away.
. I slice through the ground like a sharp-bladed farm plow —
I pick myself up, stride again on my way.

I sow all of my poems-I sow them like grain seeds;
they sprout and they grow just like grain stalks today.
But I still lie here like a twisted old bramble --
I pick myself up, stride again on my way.

I live here in a dungeon, blow open the cell-door;
above me the freed men are joyful today.
They leave me here bleeding, alone in the doorway --
I pick myself up, stride again on my way.

My clothes bloodily soaked, and dragging my weary limbs, .
with purified love I am coming this day.
I come to a house and collapse on the doorstep —
I pick myself up, stride again on my way.

(Translation by Barnett Zumoff)


 
No. 7. - (under research)
 
 
No. 8.  "How did he get here?
 (from the cycle "Spinoza", No. 2)

How did he get into this sickroom?
the philosopher from Amsterdam?
I look at him - there's no uncertainty.
It's he, it's he.
The full lips. The long nose.
The whole head as though under glass.
His sick chest heaves, straining,
racked, racked by fits of coughing.
Three hundred years - as though one minute.
A drop of blood dots his lip.
Three hundred years of moonlight fall
on his head and pillow. Fall.
Holy one,I touch your sleeve.
Wake up. Rise up. Recognize me.

(Translation by Ruth Whitman)



No. 9.  - (under research)



No. 10.  "Two times two is four"
(from the cycle "Spinoza", No. 11)

My body's passion-hide
is stripped away. My pure
soul, what does she do?
She counts, she counts.
Two times two is - four,
I times I is - you,
you times you is - me,
death times death is - rest.
My head is in the east,
my feet are in the west;
drive quicker, don't get lost -
near times near is - far.
Tap the door. - Knock, knock. -
It's open, come right in, -
kindle the last look, -
death times death is - being.

(Translation by Ruth Whitman)


 7. Yankev Glatshteyn

 
No. 14.  Good night, world

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Good night, wide world,
big stinking world.
Not you but I slam shut the gate.
With a long gabardine,
with a fiery yellow patch,
with a proud stride,
because I want to,
I'm going back to the ghetto.
Wipe away, stamp out every vestige of conversion.
I roll around in your garbage -
praise, praise, praise, -
hunchbacked Jewish life.
Damn your dirty culture, world.
I wallow in your dust
even though it's forsaken,
sad Jewish life.
German pig, cutthroat Pole,
Romania, thief, land of drunkards and gluttons.
Week-kneed democracy, with your cold
sympathy-compresses.
Good night, electrified arrogant world.
Back to my kerosene, candle shadows,
eternal October, candle stars,
to my crooked streets, humped lanterns,
my sacred pages, my Bible,
my Gemorra, to my backbreaking
studies, to the bright Yiddish prayerbook,
to law, profundity, duty, justice, -
world, I walk gladly towards quiet ghetto light.
Good night. I'll make you, world, a gift of
all my liberators.
Take back your Jesus-Marxes, choke on their courage.
Croak over a drop of our christianized blood.
For I have hope, even if He is delaying,
day by day my expectation rises.
Green leaves will yet rustle
on our sapless tree.
I don't need any consolation.
I'm going back to my very beginnings,
from Wagner's pagan music to melody, to humming.
I kiss you, disheveled Jewish life,
I cry with the joy of coming back.

August 1938.

No. 14.is one of the most famous Yiddish poems.
Its content (particularly the words about the Germans and the Poles)
should, of course, be taken in the context of the time when it was written: in 1938. 



No. 15. Mozart


I dreamed that
the gentiles crucified Mozart
and buried him in a pauper's grave.
But the Jews made him a man of God
and blessed his memory.

I, his apostle, ran all over the world,
converting everyone I met,
and whenever I caught a Christian
I made him a Mozartean.

How wonderful is the musical testament
of this divine man!
How nailed through with song
his shining hands!
In his greatest need
all the fingers of this crucified
singer were laughing.
And in his most crying grief
he loved his neighbour's ear
more than himself.

How poor and stingy -
compared with Mozart's legacy -
is the Sermon on the Mount.

(Translation by Ruth Whitman)

 


No. 16. The Joy Of the Yiddish Word

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O let me come close to the joy of the Yiddish word.
Give me whole days and nights of it.
Bind me, weave me into it,
strip me of all vanities.
Let ravens feed me, I'll live on crumbs.
A broken roof, a hard bed.
But give me whole days and nights of it.
Don't let me forget the Yiddish word
for a single moment.


I'm becoming harsh and commanding,
like the hand of my livelihood.
Capons and champagne
indigest my time.
The Yiddish word lies garnered,
but the key rusts in my hand.
Logic steals away my understanding.

O sing, sing youself towards naked austerity.
The world becomes fat in your bed.
There'll soon be no place for either of us.
The Yiddish word, loyal, silent, is waiting for you.
And you sigh in a burning dream:
I'm coming, I'm coming.

(Translation by Marina Bower)


8.   Rivka Basman Ben-Chaim

No. 17. "Scorched Bees"
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You don't even know
how well off we are,
we Jewish orphans,
who lay out our pain in Yiddish,
like bricks added to a doomed building,
a building
where angels sing near the walls
and the song reaches
the heavens.

You have no idea
how sweet it is
to sing with an angel.
Melodies circle round
like scorched bees -
they will yet discover honey
in a Yiddish word.

(Translation by Barnett Zumoff)


10.  Avrom Sutzkever

No. 21.  Poetry

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The last dark violet
plum on the tree,
delicate and tender as the pupil of an eye,
blots out in the dewy night
all love, visions, trembling,
and at the morningstar the dew
becomes airier -
that's poetry. Touch it without
letting it show the print of your fingers.




 

No.  22.  "The Banks of a River"


From a high mountain I see how the banks of a river
shimmer. In the distance
near the horizon they darken and wrangle,
then light up silvergreen and violet,
then darken again. I look down
into the river where my face's tinder is quenched
and my body shines clear, transparent,
and I say to the east, west, north, south:

Look and see
how beneath chocked leaves and houses
in cold riverwriting my name is written.

Broadcast it all over the world.
Amen.

1938

(Translation by Ruth Whitman)



No. 23.    -  under research



13.  Tsilye Dropkin

No. 27 "To a Young Poetess"

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What good is it
that your gaze pierces deep into things?
Your heart, your heart is asleep.
And when he came
and you gazed clearly
at him, as at a sun -
what good did it do?
You have to burn three times, like me,
in Hell in the fire of love -
burn long and slowly;
you have to be purified three times
in Hell, like me;
you have to love unwisely, without pride,
love unto death;
then, when you recognize death in love,
then write love-poems!

(Translation by Barnett Zumoff)


14.  Ana
Margolin

No. 28.  We Went Through Days

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We went through days as through storm-shaken gardens.
We blossomed and were happy and played with love and death.
Clouds and insolence and dreams were in our words.
And amid stubborn trees and summer-rustling gardens
we grew into a single tree.
 
And evenings spread out with heavy, dark blueness,
with the painful desires of winds and falling stars,
with the wandering, fawning shine on twitching grass and leaves.
And we wove ourselves into the wind, permeated ourselves with blueness,
and were like happy animals and wise, playful gods.




 
No. 29.   Fall of Night and Weeping 

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A silence, sudden and deep,
Between the two of us,

Like a confused letter
Announcing parting,
Like a sinking ship -

A silence without a look, without a motion,
Full of night and weeping
Between the two of us,
As if we ourselves
Were closing the door
To Paradise.


17.  Emmanuil Kazakevitch


No. 34.  The Korean Novella




On my straw mat
I lie at ease, with my sturdy limbs,
and you sit near me,
saying nothing and playing your guitar.
Beyond  trusty little windows,
the reddish sun is dying.

Somehow everything is so bluish—
there’s a bright lump in my heart.
You are a Korean girl
and I am silent, like Buddha.
It’s a wonderment to me
that you can’t speak Yiddish.

Your singing has the flavor of Asia,
often with the blessing of Jewish candles,
often with age-old gray stones
carved with little figures.
“Good morning, pretty girl—
I don’t understand what you are saying.”

Your hair like crow’s feathers,
your thousand-voiced guitar,
your lips like swan’s hearts,
your eyes like bits of diamond--
beyond the windows
lie the dark Amur mountains.

The sun is pouring its bright shine
onto my straw mat
like a beautiful, tender
Korean novella—
so peacefully, without complaints,
the way you give your lips.

Tomorrow you’ll go to your school
to teach the youngest children.
I'll help fulfill the plans
throughout the broad land,
and the Korean novella
unfolds in the rapidly passing days.

The sunlight on my straw mat
gets paler and paler,
and the sun, terribly tired,
drowns in the waters of the Amur.


(Translation by Barnett Zumoff)

18.  Boris Sandler

No. 35. (one of the ten "spheres")

Beauty
 

 What does beauty mean, what?
 Ask a blind man. He guards the secret
 like that guardian in Paradise
 who guards the cleanness of souls.
 He feels beauty with his skin,
 with the nerve-endings of his fingertips
 transmitting, as if through the finest wires,
 to his sight-deprived brain.

 He can appreciate beauty
 painted with the colors of night,
when every rustle and tremor
 tenses the vessels like strings
 on an as-yet-unplayed instrument,
 to hear how the quiet, virginal melody

 Ask a blind man
where the road to beauty is,
and follow him. Become a shadow
 and tap the earth along with his cane
his eyelids and his pupils—
and he’ll bring you there,
 himself unaware
 that he is already near the goal
and it’s just one more step to reach it.

And you, the seeing person with eyes—
 don’t stop him,
and from the very peak of the mountain
 let him take his last step,
 for as he is falling
 he’ll first take that last step up
 to his longed-for goal: beauty,
to which he has blundered in the darkness,
 holding onto the thread of a moonbeam.
 
  (Translation by B.Zumoff)


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