Rachel Korn | Poems | PASSOVER EVE

RACHEL KORN - TEXT SITE

RACHEL KORN / POEMS / BIBLICAL POEMS / PASSOVER EVE

Passover Eve
Translated by Edward Ginsburg

I cannot rise from bed
To open the door
For thee.

Like saddled horses
My crutches lean against the wall
Waiting for someone’s hands
To guide them toward me.

From earth and sky
Am I estranged
A sky dealt niggardly to me
For its sparse embrace
Of that single window in the wall.

And all that I can see is the moon
Tearing clouds asunder
To prepare a path
For thee.

Elijah the Prophet - - -
The table’s not prepared
Nor is the winecup filled
But you shall come in any case to me
In this nocturnal hour
For who – who else will come but thee?

And even then
When you were merely dreamed by men
To wander far and wide
Replacing the sorrowful night
For a goblet of sparkling wine
You must come to me
Now
With outstretched hand to touch
The crutches leaning ‘gainst the wall
Dreaming of a childhood
In some greening summer wood.

So Many Times
Translated by D.S. Glick

I have been annihilated so many times.
At the point of a moment,
On the thorn of a word,
On the barbed wire of hate.
Through hidden hypocrisy,
On burning roads,
In worlds made bitter.
I have been annihilated so many times
I can’t remember the time nor the place.

Still I return and am reborn
And on the new I become renewed.

Through the breath of the wind
Through my own tears
Like a little seed
That is sown in the fall
I become a part of a new scroll
Signed with a single star.

<---Back to Poems