DER YIDDISH-VINKL July 1, 2005
On her 80th birthday, poet Rivke Basman ben Khaim was featured in the Forverts’s Pearls of Yiddish Poetry. She started writing poems at age 7. But unlike most child prodigies, who tend to burn out at an early age, Basman ben Khaim has talents that have flourished with the years.
One of her poems, published in the Forverts, is a lament best understood in consideration of her life experience. Born and raised in a Lithuanian ghetto, she was grabbed by the Nazis and tossed from one concentration camp to another until finally she was liberated in 1945.
What follows is the text of that poem, transliterated by Goldie Gold and translated into English by Gus Tyler.
Di Eybike Trep
Di zun is hel, di zun iz andersh
Vi trep farzunken in payn.
Yeder trep a trep fun vander
Vos shlept mikh tog oys, tog ayn.
Tsementene, kalte, groye
Zey shlingen alts vos shmekt mit glik
Ikh shlep zikh, shlep zikh nokh mayn troyer
Frimorgn ayn, bay nakht tsurik.
Dos gantse lebn trep zikh dreyen
Vi farsholtn, on a tsil
Tsegangen zaynen lang shoyn shneyen
Un ikh gey nokh alts oyf trep vi dul.
Tsi vel ikh kenen eyn mol friling
Baym letstn trepl blaybn shteyn?
Un oysrufn fun tifn hartsn:
“Shoyn mer keyn trep nito tsu geyn!”
The Eternal Steps
The sun is bright but it looks strange
Like steps deep buried in deep pain.
My head and heart feel quite deranged
I feel the pain again, again.
The steps are cold and of cement
They swallow all that holds out hope.
In constant pain my time is spent
I’d like to hang me from a rope!
Naught but pain is ever showing
As if I’m cursed without an end.
Although, at last, it isn’t snowing
On climbing steps my time I spend.
Will I someday a springtime know
And on the final step will stand?
And loudly to the world will crow
“At last I’ve found a station grand!”
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