Classic Poem

— A Young Jew . The weed of their hatred
which has grown so tall
now turns towards us
many heads,
many pointed petals and leaves;
what did they whisper to each other before the ikons,
and smile at over the glasses of vodka,
the spies and gendarmes, Cossacks and police,
that a crowd of ragged strangers burst into the street
leaving crooked shields of David in every pane of glass
and a Jew here and there in the gutter
clubbed to death for his coat like an animal for its skin,
the open mouth toothless, the beard stiffened with blood —
away, Jew, away!
obey the ancient summons, hurry out of this land!

Republic,
garrisoned by the waves;
every man welcome if distressed by lord or king;
and learning free to all as the streets and highways,
free as the light of street lamps,
piped into every house as the sweet water;
nation whose founders were not leaders of legions or regiments,
or masters of the long ships of war, of bowmen or artillery,
but farmers, who spoke of liberty and justice for all
and planted these abstractions in the soil
to send their seed
by every current of wind and water
to the despotisms of the earth;
your name
is like the cool wind
in a summer day
under the tyranny of the sun;
like a warm room
when, against the tyranny of the wind,
one has come a long way
on frozen ruts and clods;
the oblongs of your buildings in the west —
smooth brightness of electric light
on the white stone
and the motorcars gliding along your crowded streets —
are as the triangles of Egypt were,
and the semicircles of the arches of Rome;
how great you have become, United States!

Or to the land of rock and sand, mountain and marsh,
where the sun still woos Delilah
and the night entraps Samson,
Palestine —
and your speech shall be Hebrew;
what the mother has spun,
the daughter shall weave;
where the father has cleared away the stones,
the son shall sow and reap;
and lives will not burn singly
in single candlesticks —
how much better to live
where his fathers have lived,
than to be going about from land to land —
wasting one's life in beginnings;
how pleasant it is
for the body to sweat in the sun,
to be cool in the wind,
from dawn until twilight,
starlight to starlight;
how much better to live in the tip of the flame,
the blue blaze of sunshine,
than creep about in corners,
safe in cracks —
dribble away your days in pennies.
In that air
salty with the deeds of heroes and the speech of prophets,
as when one has left the streets and come to the
plunging and orderly sea, the green water
tumbling into yellow sand and rushing foam,
and rising in incessant waves —
upon your hills, Judah,
in your streets and narrow places
upon your cobblestones, Jerusalem!

Yet like the worm in horseradish
for whom there is no sweeter root,
should I, setting my wits against this icy circumstance,
make, like the Eskimo, my home of it?
The dust of this Russia,
a small cloud
raining its sound
from the wide sky.