The Maccabaean

'Al Shechitah'

From the Yiddish of N. Bialik's Version of a Hebrew Poem by Himself

Of steel and iron, cold and hard and dumb,Now forge thyself a heart, O man! and comeAnd walk the town of slaughter. Thou shalt seeWith waking eyes and touch with conscious hands,On fences, posts, and doors,On paving in the street, on wooden floors,The black, dried blood, commingled here and thereWith brains and splintered bone.And thou shalt wander in and out of ruins,Of broken walls, doors wrenched from off their hinges,Stoves overturned, dilapidated hearths,And singed beams laid bare, and half-burnt bricks,Where axe and flame and iron yesternightDanced a wild dance and led the bloody revel.Then, creep to attics, clamber over roofs,Peep in where all the black and yawning holesAppear like ragged wounds that neither waitNor hope for healing more in all this world.Outside, the sultry air is thick with feathers,And thou shalt think to wade as in a river,A flow of human sweat, the sweat of anguish.Thou stumblest over heaps of goods and chattels—They're just whole lives of men, whole lives of men,Like broken potsherds, past all mending ever—Thou walkest, runnest, fallest in the wreckage,In cushions, tinsel, linings, silk and satin,All dragged and rent and torn to bits and trampled—And scarfs and prayer-books, parchments, scraps of Torah,The white and holy wrappings of thy soul.Look, look! they fold themselves about thy feet,They kiss thy very footmarks in the dust . . .Thou fleest! whither? back to light and air?Run, run! the sky will laugh thee, man, to scorn!The sun will blind thee with his glowing spears,Acacias hung with tassels white and greenWill poison thee with smells of blood and flowers,And blooms and feathers fall on thee in showers.A thousand, thousand shivered bits of glassShall twinkle in thy dazzled eyes—behold!For now is given thee a wondrous thing,A twofold gift, a slaughter and a spring!