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JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
m ination o f all th a t is adm irab le in m ode rn Yiddish verse. His
poems abou t Rabbi Nachman o f Bratzlav, his odes to Yiddish,
and his poems o f the Holocaust, o f Israel rebo rn , and o f Am er i
can Jewry, a re am ong the m ajor docum en ts o f the Jew ish peo
p le’s tribu lation and transcendence in the m od e rn world.
I cannot gaze at your radiant countenance, wondrous illumination.
I bow before you and awe grips me.
I hear a trumpet call throughout the earth.
You are no longer a cipher.
You are a vision of all beginnings and endings.
I close my eyes, lest you blind me.
Who are you
—
God, nation, land
Or fiery Bible?
Why does the East blaze so in 1948?
Why do the stars shoot like fiery whips
?
How can I, a child of chastisement, interpret this all?
Fire-vision, I stand before you
As before a burning bush.
With trembling I utter:
You transpired, you exist.
* * *
Eretz Yisrael, you are the Bible-come-true of a little schoolboy
Above whose head all has been fulfilled.
Sing, Jewish daughters, in the vineyards: all has been fulfilled!
From early childhood he was shown signs and wonders.
His teacher Daniel never stopped
Reciting triumphant verses
But he never understood a word.
Now he sees the light of day.
It really did not take very long
For the hour and its aftermath to arrive.
(“Bist Geshen, Bist G evo rn”)
SEGAL’S THEMES
J . I. Segal (1896-1959) and A a ron Zeitlin (1898-1973) were,
like Glatstein, poets whose scope o f activity was de f ined by th e ir
Jewishness. Segal was obsessed with Jew ish un iqueness, with the
shtetl,
and with Hasidism. He was the poet o f long ing fo r the past