sovietjewry:

An heir of Shakespeare, of shepherds and knights,
So, good for you, you gentile poet!
The earth is yours, where your fat hog treads:
She gives him feeding-grass, and to your muse, gives fodder.

You sit just like a thrush, on your branch and warble,
And you are answered by all the far-off expanses:
By plentiful fields, the majesty of cities,
The full serenity of total satiation.

And here I am, a no-neednik, a poet among Jews,
Grown amid wild grasses, not in our own land,
From grandfathers — weary wanderers with dusty beards, —

Nourished by the dust of holy-books and fairs;
And I sing, in a foreign world, the tears
Of wanderers in a dessert, under foreign stars.

— Mani Leib, translated by A.Y. Resnikoff

Mani Leib (pseudonym of Mani Leib Brahinsky, 1883-1953), was a Yiddish poet born in Nizhyn, Ukraine, who arrived in the U.S. in 1905. He crafted formally unified poems that affirmed a belief in the ability of art to compensate for human suffering. His “sound poems” drew renewed attention to the Yiddish language through their skillful use of alliteration and repetition.

Matrix Magazine, Fall 2011

An heir of Shakespeare, of shepherds and knights,
So, good for you, you gentile poet!
The earth is yours, where your fat hog treads:
She gives him feeding-grass, and to your muse, gives fodder.

You sit just like a thrush, on your branch and warble,
And you are answered by all the far-off expanses:
By plentiful fields, the majesty of cities,
The full serenity of total satiation.

And here I am, a no-neednik, a poet among Jews,
Grown amid wild grasses, not in our own land,
From grandfathers — weary wanderers with dusty beards, —

Nourished by the dust of holy-books and fairs;
And I sing, in a foreign world, the tears
Of wanderers in a dessert, under foreign stars.

— Mani Leib, translated by A.Y. Resnikoff

Mani Leib (pseudonym of Mani Leib Brahinsky, 1883-1953), was a Yiddish poet born in Nizhyn, Ukraine, who arrived in the U.S. in 1905. He crafted formally unified poems that affirmed a belief in the ability of art to compensate for human suffering. His “sound poems” drew renewed attention to the Yiddish language through their skillful use of alliteration and repetition.

Matrix Magazine, Fall 2011