Elegy to the shtetlen

In 1947 Antoni Slonimski (1895 – 1976), a Polish poet of Jewish origins wrote a lament for the vanished small towns of Poland that were once predominately Jewish. A phrase from this poem, wrongly translated was chosen as a title for an illustrated guide to Jewish Poland. My husband, Stuart and I have just made a translation of Slonimski’s elegy.

                                                            
                                                            Elegy to the shtetlen
                                                            
                                                            (translation of Elegia miasteczek żydowskich, Antoni Słonimski)
                                                            
                                                            No more, no more shtetlen in Poland,
                                                            whether in Hrubieszów, Karczew, Brody or Falenica
                                                            you’d be hard put to find lit candles in their windows,
                                                            or catch the strains of song in wooden synagogues.
                                                            
                                                            The last vestiges of Jewish life have gone;
                                                            blood covered over with sand, all traces swept away,
                                                            walls whitened with fresh coats of lime
                                                            as if some plague has passed, or a feast is welcomed in.
                                                            
                                                            Here the moon shines solitary, alien, chill, and pale.
                                                            Out of town, on the highway, where night is ablaze,
                                                            my Jewish kinsfolk, makars a, will not find
                                                            Chagall’s two golden moons.
                                                            
                                                            Those moons illumine another planet now.
                                                            They fled, frightened by the sombre silence.
                                                            The shtetlen are no more where the cobbler was a poet,
                                                            the watchmaker a philosopher, barber a troubadour.
                                                            
                                                            The shtetlen are no more where Bible chants
                                                            swirled on the wind with Polish song and Slav lament,
                                                            where Jewish grandfathers, secluded in shady cherry orchards,
                                                            mourned the holy walls of Jerusalem.
                                                            
                                                            Those shtetlen are no more, vanished with a shadow,
                                                            and this shadow will intrude between our words
                                                            until the advent of brotherhood, unity renewed:
                                                            two nations nourished by centuries of suffering.