A Jew, seeing a Christian, thinks: It’s the devil brought him! Approaching, he says: May success attend you and may God smile on you! Leaving, he mutters: May he disappear like ice in the fire, like Pharaoh in the sea!
(From a medieval Hebrew chronicle)
To N.K.
The rustle of a page will haunt us
And our sabbath cup is empty
And blood of that wretch from the cross
Remained with us and with them, our children
We are hounded beyond the hellish Pale
And crimson worms blossom in the mouths
Of women in their thirty-third year
Our brother devils for all eternity sold us
The power to change light into dark
Whispering a magic spell.
Let us pour poison into the rivers
Let us bring mass death to the cattle, a plague to the people,
Gout to the king
Promise we’ll not do it anymore,
We’ll depart from everywhere, while the going’s good
And will feed only in those dining-rooms
Where there’s cranberry cordial not infant’s blood
Live in the usual way. We’ll ask mama to let us go
Collect the suitcase: pants, a towel
Swimming shoes
An inflatable mattress
Sunglasses
Panama pyjamas
Ask Pharaoh’s envoys to stamp our visa
But it’s no use watching TV in the hotel
Or clambering into the hippo’s jaws
Or onto the rhino’s back
And measuring the Giza pyramids
And splashing in the Nile’s rapids —
Other people do that sort of thing.
Let’s find the Cairo Genizah*—
Crooked little letters, wonderful,
Let’s read some
Let Joseph, interpreter of dreams,
Sell us the last dream,
That boy, good at fabrications.
We’re so weary of all-night vigils
Over books: the legacy of generations
Grows from year to year, like the beard,
Bluey-black, of that Jew
Who was condemned to live forever. We’ll not pay
The fee for the river crossing
—The waters will part—and the people will cross
That dark beggar from the Dung Gate,**
Preserver of the old manuscript,
Mumbling the morning prayer.
Let’s go, let’s leave Egypt,
Let’s have a smoke in the wind.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
*Genizah: a room adjoining a synagogue for the safekeeping of old or damaged books, documents, or valuables (translator’s note).
**The Dung Gate is mentioned in the book of Nehemiah as the dispatch point for Jerusalem’s refuse. Evidently the refuse was removed from the city through this gate (translator’s note).