I know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in January.
He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing.
His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, terribly glad that God made fish, and customers to whom he may call his wares, from a pushcart.
First winter rain--
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.
Translated by Robert Hass
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
First snow
gentle *drop* from heaven
hands raised, eyes closed
First snow
falling
on the half-finished bridge.
Translated by Robert Hass
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.
First day of spring--
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.
Translated by Robert Hass
O fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind!
As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping;
And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,
O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping,
And Ceres' golden fields;-the sultry hind
Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping.
The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.
What is your feeling about the revolutionary spirit ofyour age, as expressed, for instance, in such movements as communism, surrealism, anarchism?
The revolutionary spirit of our age (as expressed by communism, surrealism, anarchism, madness) is a hot firebrand thrust into the dark lantern of the world.
In Nine Decades
a Mad Queen shall be born.