To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Jerome Rothenberg & Ariel Resnikoff: A Poem Beginning with Two Lines by Likht (in English & Yiddish)

Author’s Note: “A lid vos heybt on mit tsvey shuros fun likhtn (A Poem Beginning with Two Lines from Likht) is a translingual epistolary experiment & collaborative double-iteration between English and Yiddish poetic tongues. Mikhl Likht (1893-1953), our radical Yiddish modernist ancestor (New York and “Objectivist” based) calls out from the interstices of an expanded-Yiddish praxis, coaxing our poem into the the wor(l)d with two lines from his “poem-of-a-life,” Protsestiyes (Processions). With Likht as our key precedent for a contemporary poetics on the Yiddish-English translational threshold, we traverse in this work the semi-permeable borders between our doubling mother tongues, looping these languages through one another and back again, in the form of a highly adaptive poetic boomerang (to use a metaphor Likht employed) that returns from the “other side” of the linguistic threshold already changed. This work is forthcoming in 2019 in "an anthology of innovative multilingual New York writing", edited by Bob Holman & Patricio Ferrari.  What follows here of course is our doubly-composed English/Yiddish poem in its two linguistic iterations. (A.R. & J.R.)]

A POEM BEGINNING WITH TWO LINES BY LIKHT 

Ascent to the paradise of hearing, breath(e) hell
on the moulding of the dreamt ladder—


like dirt                                                                                                                                                   between our teeth

the smell of
words

angry &
bare

smacks of the streets                                                                                                                                  they come from

where new & old                                                                                                                                   wares we sold            
out to genteel tongues,                                                                                                                        dried & pickled 
in casks what                                                                                                                                                we drink first
taints our mouths,                                                                                                                                   but fails to raise us 
further   once
the dream explodes

in shatnes smells &
boiling treyf
over noodles                                                                                                                                                       on the stove
a pork tongues                                                                                                                                                       prayer & catfish
proverb carries                                                                                                                                        smell of distant
holes & hovels
men in fur-trimmed hats
& cracked galoshes                                                                                                                                      in pools of hot-cold
bathing babes                                                                                                                                                emerge toyvl’d
& ruddy
in muddy
streets
oh little angels
arms slashed                                                                                                                                                                  at the wrists
opening their jaws                                                                                                                                        & craws
in klezmer chorus
to what murder follows
four crows gather                                                                                                                                        & glean
  w gentile-zionist                                                                                                                                 beaks, 
not dreamt
– never never –
far from any home
the home boy
can confess to                                                                                                                                                in the star-struck
fabled town                                                                                                                                                                      the first, the last shaygetz
alive surviving                                                                                                                                            in basement-attics
on leaves of zhargon                                                                                                                           alone 
w/ nowhere out                                                                                                                                            but the sky 
I too                                                                                                                                                                                  & you
in late or latterday                                                                                                                                                          imaginings                                                                                                                                                       
to make a new                                                                                                                                               supreme surreal
& lonely (only)                                                                                                                                             jewish vaudeville
the archipelago actors                                                                                                                                 we cast in 
red string                                                                                                                                                             across a chain-link stage   
their teeth & tongues                                                                                                                           wading in 
mad galician mud                                                                                                                             brought wholesale
onto second avenue                                                                                                                                  & kingdoms west
a world of cafeterias                                                                                                                                     & stinky fishheads
scratchy records bouncing                                                                                                                        on their scratchy phonographs
from which the fathers fled                                                                                                                    leaving a residue behind.

a lid vos heybt on mit tsvey shures fun likhtn

“kleter in geher-gan-eden, otem-gehenem
oyf di laystlekh fun dem oysgetroymtn layter — ”

vi shmutz
tsvishn undzere tseyn

dem geruf fun
verter

in ka’as
un naket

shmokst fun di gasn
fun vanen zey kimen

vu naye un alte
skhures mir hobn farkoyft

oyf eydele tsungen        
geshpont un aynge’esigte

in feslen vos
mir trinkn ershtns

trayft undzere moyln
nor farfelt undz oyf-tsu-shteln

vayter amol
platst oyf dem troym

in shatnez gerukh
zidndikn trayf            

iber lokshn
oyfn oyven

a khazer tsung               
tfile un kats-fish


shprikhvort shlept
a gerukh fun vayte

griber un khatkes
mener in shtraymlekh

un geshponte kaloshn     
in baysenen fun heys-kaltn

gebodnen bobeles     
kimt aroys getoyvlt

un roytlekh
in geblotikte

gasn
oy kleyne melokhim    

arms tsugeshnaydet
oyfn hand-gelenken

ofenen dem kinbakn
un krofn       

in klezmer khor
tsu vos hareyge geyt nokh

fir kroen zamln ayn
un klaybn

mit ivanziuniyes       
shnoblen

nit getroymt
- keyn mol nit -

vayt funem heym
der heym-bokher  

ken zikh bavayzn
dem shtern-geshlogtn

gefabltn shtot
dem ershtns un letsn shaygets 

khay lebt iber
in unterstn-boydem

fun zshargon-bleter
aleyn

avek in ergetz nit oys
nor himl

ikh oykhet,
un du

in der nokh oder nokhteglekh
fantaziyes        

tsu makhn a nayem
hekhstn suril                

un eynzam nor
yidishn vodvil

di arkhipeligos aktiyorn
hobn mir gevorfnt

in royte tsvirn
ariber a kaytikn geshtelt

zeyere tsyen un tsungn
durkhgeyn in

meshugenen galitsianern bloteh
geshlept in groys

in sekent avenu
un malkhus vest      

a gantse velt fun kafeteries
un geshtunkenen fishkep

geritsene rekordirungen zikh berimen
oyf zeyere geritsene fonografs

fun vanen di tatn hobn geflien
gelozn iber an obzats

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