Classic Poem

The east is alight as far as Hebron.
In the room of hewn stone, the vaulted room,
the priests would hear the noise of the opening of the great gate of the Temple;
and the goats on the mountain would sneeze
at the smell of the incense.
Colonnades, a forum, and a basilica,
the camping-grounds of the legions; the tents of the Arabs;
an olive tree beside the winepress or the gap in the wall,
and paths that lead towards cisterns, pits, caverns, and winepresses:
hilly or rocky country,
and a place over which the sea rolls during a storm.

Israel is like a bird
that a creeping weasel has wounded in the head
or a man knocked against a wall —
the cattle have trampled it but still it flutters;

if there is bone enough to make the tooth of a key,
and ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet —
the house is sold and the door but not the key;
the ship is sold, the mast, the sail, the anchor, and all the means for steering,
but not the packing-bags or lading.
The cord that holds the balances of dealers in fine purple
and a harlot's shift that is made like network;
the hooks of porters or a weaver's pin
and the point of the sun-dial;
oil dripping into the trough from between the pressing-stone and the boards of the olive-press
and lamps in synagogues, in houses of study, in dark alleys.

Put out the lamp for fear of gentiles,
for fear of thieves or of an evil spirit;
when will heart and mouth agree?
Make ready all that is needful for the dead,
and anoint it, and wash it,
bind up the chin, and hire a wailing woman
and two to play dirges on the flute.

Go with a staff and a bag and a scroll of the law,
and fear not the rush of tramping shoes, at the sound of the shouting!
Cut it with sickles, uproot it with spades;
if it grows into the blade, it must be hoed up;
if into the ear, it must be broken off;
if into the full corn, it must be burnt.

In the evening, until midnight, until dawn,
as soon as we can tell between blue and green,
between blue and white,
when we lie down and when we stand up,
each in his own way
(though we stop to return a greeting or greet a man
out of respect, out of fear),
bringing grapes in baskets to the winepress or figs in baskets to the drying-place,
trampling the grain and binding it into sheaves,
or the women spinning their yarn by moonlight,
a workingman on the top of a tree or a course of stones,
or a bridgroom on the first night,
or he whose dead lies unburied before him,
and they that bear the bier and they that relieve them —
if our faces cannot, our hearts
turn towards Jerusalem
and you, the God of our fathers,
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.