De Poolse dichter en schrijver Antoni Słonimski werd geboren op 15 november 1895 in Warschau. Zie ook mijn blog van 15 november 2009.
Rebellion
Mein Herz zu rühren braucht es nur sehr wenig.
Mein Wort entlädt sich leicht wie ein Gewehr.
Im Königreich bin ich ein Revolutionär,
Und in der Republik lobpreise ich den König.
Elegy for the Little Jewish Towns
Gone now are, gone are in Poland the Jewish villages,
in Hrubieszow, Karczew, Brody, Falenica
you look in vain for candlelight in the windows
and listen for song from the wooden synagogue.
Disappeared are the last rests, the Jewish possessions,
the blood is covered over by sand, the traces removed,
and the walls whitewashed with lime,
as for a high holiday or after a contagious disease.
One moon shines here, cold, pale, alien,
already behind the town, on the road,
when night uncoils its light,
my Jewish relatives, boys with poetic feeling,
will no longer find Chagal’s two golden moons.
The moons now wander above another planet,
frightened away by grim silence, no trace of them.
Gone now are those little towns where the shoemaker was a poet,
The watchmaker a philosopher, the barber a troubadour.
Gone now are those little towns where the wind joined
Biblical songs with Polish tunes and Slavic rue,
Where old Jews in orchards in the shade of cherry trees
Lamented for the holy walls of Jerusalem.
Gone now are those little towns, though the poetic mists,
The moons, winds, ponds, and stars above them
Have recorded in the blood of centuries the tragic tales,
The histories of the two saddest nations on earth.
Vertaald door Howard Weiner
Antoni Słonimski (15 november 1895 – 4 juli 1976)
Lees verder “Antoni Słonimski, Elizabeth Arthur, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Marianne Moore”
