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Good Night, World

1 Good night, wide world,

2 Great, stinking world.

3 Not you, but I slam the gate.

4 With the long gabardine,

5 With the yellow patch – burning –

6 With proud stride

7 I decide -- :

8 I am going back to the ghetto.

9 Wipe out, stamp out all traces of apostasy.

10 I wallow in your filth.

11 Blessed, blessed, blessed,

12 Hunchbacked Jewish life.

13 Go to hell, with your polluted cultures, world.

14 Though all is ravaged,

15 I am dust of your dust,

16 Sad Jewish life.

17 Prussian pig and hate-filled Pole;

18 Jew-killers, land of guzzle and gorge.

19 Flabby democracies, with your cold

20 Sympathy compresses.

21 Good night, electro-impudent world.

22 Back to my kerosene, tallowed shadows,

23 Eternal October, minute stars,

24 To my warped streets and hunchbacked lanterns,

25 My worn-out pages of the Prophets,

26 My Gemaras, to arduous

27 Talmudic debates, to lucent, exegetic Yiddish,

28 To Rabbinical Law, to deep-deep meaning, to duty, to what is right.

29 World, I walk with joy to the quiet ghetto light.

30 Good night. It’s all yours, world. I disown

31 My liberation.

32 Take back your Jesusmarxists, choke on their arrogance.

33 Croak on a drop of our baptized blood.

34 And though He tarries, I have hope;

35 Day in, day out, my expectation grows.

36 Leaves will yet green

37 On our withered tree.

38 I don’t need any solace.

39 I return to our cramped space.

40 From Wagner’s pagan-music to chants of sacred humming.

41 I kiss you, tangled strands of Jewish life.

42 Within me weeps the joy of coming home.