Jerome Rothenberg and Ariel Resnikoff
'A Poem Beginning with Two Lines by Likht' (in English and Yiddish)

[Author’s Note:“A lid vos heybt on mit tsvey shuros fun likhtn”(“A Poem Beginning with Two Lines from Likht”) is a translingual epistolary experiment and collaborative double-iteration between English and Yiddish poetic tongues. Mikhl Likht (1893–1953), our radical Yiddish modernist ancestor (New York and “Objectivist” based) calls out from the interstices of an expanded-Yiddish praxis, coaxing our poem into the the wor(l)d with two lines from his “poem-of-a-life,” Protsestiyes (Processions). With Likht as our key precedent for a contemporary poetics on the Yiddish-English translational threshold, we traverse in this work the semipermeable borders between our doubling mother tongues, looping these languages through one another and back again, in the form of a highly adaptive poetic boomerang (to use a metaphor Likht employed) that returns from the “other side” of the linguistic threshold already changed. This work is forthcoming in 2019 in “an anthology of innovative multilingual New York writing,” edited by Bob Holman and Patricio Ferrari. What follows here of course is our doubly composed English/Yiddish poem in its two linguistic iterations. (A.R. and J.R.)]
a poem beginning with two lines by likht
Ascent to the paradise of hearing, breath(e) hell
on the moulding of the dreamt ladder —
like dirt
between our teeth
the smell of
words
angry &
bare
smacks of the streets
they come from
where new & old
wares we sold
out to genteel tongues,
dried & pickled
in casks what we drink first
taints our mouths,
but fails to raise us
further once
the dream explodes
in shatnes smells &
boiling treyf
over noodles
on the stove
a pork tongues
prayer & catfish
proverb carries
smell of distant
holes & hovels
men in fur-trimmed hats
& cracked galoshes in pools of hot-cold
bathing babes
emerge toyvl’d
& ruddy
in muddy
streets
oh little angels
arms slashed
at the wrists
opening their jaws
& craws
in klezmer chorus
to what murder follows
four crows gather
& glean
w gentile-zionist
beaks,
not dreamt
– never never –
far from any home
the home boy
can confess to
in the star-struck
fabled town
the first, the last shaygetz
alive surviving
in basement-attics
on leaves of zhargon
alone
w/ nowhere out
but the sky
I too & you
in late or latterday imaginings
to make a new supreme surreal
& lonely (only)
jewish vaudeville
the archipelago actors
we cast in
red string across a chain-link stage
their teeth & tongues
wading in
mad galician mud
brought wholesale
onto second avenue
& kingdoms west
a world of cafeterias
& stinky fishheads
scratchy records bouncing
on their scratchy phonographs
from which the fathers fled
leaving a residue behind.
A LID VOS HEYBT ON MIT TSVEY SHURES FUN LIKHTN
“kleter in geher-gan-eden, otem-gehenem
oyf di laystlekh fun dem oysgetroymtn layter —”
vi shmutz
tsvishn undzere tseyn
dem geruf fun
verter
in ka’as
un naket
shmokst fun di gasn
fun vanen zey kimen
vu naye un alte
skhures mir hobn farkoyft
oyf eydele tsungen
geshpont un aynge’esigte
in feslen vos
mir trinkn ershtns
trayft undzere moyln
nor farfelt undz oyf-tsu-shteln
vayter amol
platst oyf dem troym
in shatnez gerukh
zidndikn trayf
iber lokshn
oyfn oyven
a khazer tsung
tfile un kats-fish
shprikhvort shlept
a gerukh fun vayte
griber un khatkes
mener in shtraymlekh
un geshponte kaloshn
in baysenen fun heys-kaltn
gebodnen bobeles
kimt aroys getoyvlt
un roytlekh
in geblotikte
gasn
oy kleyne melokhim
arms tsugeshnaydet
oyfn hand-gelenken
ofenen dem kinbakn
un krofn
in klezmer khor
tsu vos hareyge geyt nokh
fir kroen zamln ayn
un klaybn
mit ivanziuniyes
shnoblen
nit getroymt
– keyn mol nit –
vayt funem heym
der heym-bokher
ken zikh bavayzn
dem shtern-geshlogtn
gefabltn shtot
dem ershtns un letsn shaygets
khay lebt iber
in unterstn-boydem
fun zshargon-bleter
aleyn
avek in ergetz nit oys
nor himl
ikh oykhet,
un du
in der nokh oder nokhteglekh
fantaziyes
tsu makhn a nayem
hekhstn suril
un eynzam nor
yidishn vodvil
di arkhipeligos aktiyorn
hobn mir gevorfnt
in royte tsvirn
ariber a kaytikn geshtelt
zeyere tsyen un tsungn
durkhgeyn in
meshugenen galitsianern bloteh
geshlept in groys
in sekent avenu
un malkhus vest
a gantse velt fun kafeteries
un geshtunkenen fishkep
geritsene rekordirungen zikh berimen
oyf zeyere geritsene fonografs
fun vanen di tatn hobn geflien
gelozn iber an obzats
Poems and poetics