Here the waters converge and in their fork
we sit on the ground and weep.
So this is exile.
Their currents flow by me. Why should they heed
a man in love with the past
of his own country,
lost to him now, elsewhere? Our home river,
gone underground, flows counter.
And when our masters –
half in mockery, yet half curious
to hear such foreign lore –
call for an old song,
I hang my harp high on a willow bough
leaning across the flood.
Jerusalem,
let the hand that writes these verses wither and die
if I forget you now
in this ill time;
let my tongue stick in my throat if I sell short
the source of all my words,
fail to remember
where my joys began. In the mean time,
Daughter of Babylon, you
have humbled us:
you may publish us to the world, you may ignore us.
But we have time. In time
we will be revenged.