DER YIDDISH-VINKL April 7, 2006
Readers of Der Vinkl need no introduction to Joan Braman, whose clever translations of English classics into Yiddish have graced our column often. She is with us again, in a translation of a sonnet by John Keats.
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
Shterndl
Shterndl, volt ikh fest geven vi du —
Nor nit vi du in himlisher eynzamkayt
Heylik un mit an eybiker geduld.
Un farefnte oygn vos zeen fun der vaytns;
Nit kukndik oyf di vasern vos fleysn
Un reynikn di erd fun breg tsu breg.
Oder oyf di hoykhe berg un breyte plenen,
Vos mit nay-gefalener shney vern badekt —
Neyn — ober nokh fest un umbaytevdik,
Tsu lign vakhik oyf mayn shensters brust,
Vi a shifl fun di khvalkhelekh gevigt,
Dos harts tzerudert fun a zisn umruh,
Nokh, nokh ir shtiln otem nor tsu hern,
Un azoy oyf eybik leb, anit — nifter vern.
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