I ran out to the street.
The street was still asleep
In a black and burdened dream.
Quiet watched the moon
With a dead face, dead and white.
Silent, a shadow moved
With a dead face, dead and white.
And from windows and from doorposts
After me there swarmed and sprung
With long, with lolling tongues--
Thin, bony ghosts.
The deathbed night
Laughed aphasia
and laughed spite.*
Kh’bin in gas aroysgelofn.
In a shvern, shvartsn kholem
Iz di gas nokh shtil geshlofn;
Mit a vaysn toytn ponim
Hot di levone shtil gekukt.
Mit a vaysn toytn ponim
Hot a shotn zikh gerukt.
Un fun tirn, un fun fentster
Zenen nokh mir nokhgeshprungen
Mit aroysgeshtrekte tsungen--
Dine, beynike geshpenster.
Shtum gelakht, shtum gelakht
Hot di goysesdike nakht.
By Moyshe Varshe
Translated by Corbin Allardice
*- The word here rendered as “deathbed” is goysesdik, which means “on one’s deathbed, dying,” the choice of translation is to preserve the more effusive, evocative nature of the original verse. The final line literally translates to “laughed mutely, laughed mutely.” I opted for “spite,” of course, to preserve the rhyme. The use of “aphasia” is certainly tendentious, and I am uncertain of its success, however I feel that it captures Varshe’s fixation on silence/muteness while also echoing his persistent interest in illness and nosology.
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