Jewish Love Poems

Dybbuk

O Father, please do not wash my sins,
All will be pleasantly explained.

Salome’s klipeh bones
Were heavier than
Tarot cards.

Under the vulture-shadow
Of her heizel veil,
My darkening bull-blood baptized
Agripa’s silver plate.

Father, please do not wash my sins,
If only you could know,
How love bored us
Like King James Bible…[1]


Hartsvaitik

Kalleh moid, Ich hob dir lieb!
Towards an epistemology of the sacred.

What is gained
By comparing the data collected by one eye
With the data collected by the other?

Shaineh maidel, Ich hob dir lieb!
(a + b) 2 = a2 + 2ab + 2b
Also seems to be true in Euclidean geometry.

Dos hartz hot mir gezogt,
Fission with replication
Is certainly a basic requirement of life.

Me zogt,
The worst siege is a ghost encircling a mind.[2]


Golem

Kleine faigelah, ich bin ein fantazyor.[3]

It appears I am a ghost,
Bodiless, hovering by, alone with himself,
Only existing in your ideal limbo.

Did I, myself, become calligraphy
To compensate the remainder
As Leda’s goose?

Have I toiled to be too many words
And exist? Did I forget myself of me?
Or of you?

You struck a passage
I ignored still existed.
Now I’m solidifying cartilage

(Or turning bone to gristle?).
Do not be sad,
You shouldn’t go to bed sad.

You are yourself past beautiful
To be a princess abandoned in a tower.
When you arrive in Prague,

Remember me,
Peek at the castle,
I am going to be there,

As usual,
Playing cards with Franz (Kafka),
Nailing Schiele's tobacco,

(he always has tobacco to roll).

I'm going to try
To hear your voice
Above the city’s hubbub,

Making an additional effort
When bells toll in all houses,
On the hour and half-past.

Every night,
When you go to bed,
Kiss the curve of your hips for me.

Do not be sad.
You exist,
That is enough.


Tsaddik

It is written:
“What man sees is because He wills it so”.

It is deemed not for correction.

There are things in the world,
To divert a person from the right way.

That shall be the end of it all.

The lack of strength
Will make me observe
Torah and Mitzvoth. [4]


Lilith [5] (poem 666)

She's dancing in the masks,
Tied to this person,
Allowing it to float away to the desert.

There unbinding,
To conjure these demons of love,
With great groaning and torment,
one after the other.
___________________________________

Yiddish/English notes:

[1]
Dybbuk - A Cabalistic conception; a soul condemned to wander through this world because of its sins.

Klipeh - A female demon
Heizel - Whorehouse.

[2]
Dos hartz hot mir gezogt - My heart told me.
Hartsvaitik - Heartache
Ich hob dir lieb – I love you
Kalleh moid - A girl of marriageable age
Me zogt - They say; it is said.
Shaineh maidel - pretty girl .

[3]
Kleine faigelah, ich bin ein fantazyor - Little bird, I'm a dreamer.

[4]
Tsaddik – A pious man.
Sefer Ha-Mitzvoth - The Book of Divine Commandments.

[5]
SYLLABICATION: Lil·ith
PRONUNCIATION: llth
NOUN: 1. An evil female spirit in ancient Semitic legend, alleged to haunt deserted places and attack children. 2. The first wife of Adam in Hebrew folklore, believed to have been in existence before the creation of Eve. ETYMOLOGY: Hebrew lîlît, from Akkadian liltu, from Sumerian lilla, a demon.