Uri Zvi Greenberg: Under the tooth of their plow translated by Milton Teichman

American Poetry Review, The, Jul 1995 by Greenberg, Uri Zvi

Again he snows have melted there--and the murderers now are farmers.(1)

They have gone out to plow their fields--fields that are my graveyards.

If the tooth of the plow digs up a skeleton which breaks over the furrow,

The plowman will neither grieve nor tremble

But he will smile--he will note where his implement left its mark.

Once more a spring landscape--flowering bulbs, lillac, twittering birds.

Herds lie down by the shallow waters of the stream.

Only there are no more Jews--no more Jews with their beards and sidecurls.

They are gone from the inns with their prayershawls and fringes;

Gone from the shops that sold trinkets, or clothing, or food.

Gone from their workbenches, gone from the trains, the markets, the synagogues-

All, all under the tooth of the Christian plow.

With abounding grace God has visited his Gentiles.

Yes, springtime is springtime--and the summer will be fat.

Roadside trees swell like those! in the gardens.

Never has fruit been so red now there are no more Jews.

Alas, Jews have no bells for summoning God.

Blessed the Christians for they have bells ringing from steeples.

Even now, the voice of bells rings over the plain, flowing over

bright and fragrant landscape.

The bells are a mighty voice, master of everything.

Once they passed over the roofs of Jews--but no more.

Blessed is Christianity for it has bells on the heights to honor

a God who brines good to Christians and to all....

And all the Jews are buried under the tooth of their plow,

Or under pasture grass,

Or in forest graves,

Or on the banks of rivers, or within them,

Or on the roadsides.

Praise be to Yezunyu(2) with solemn bells: Ding-Dong!

Notes

1. The reference is to Poles who collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of Jews.

2. Diminutive for Jesus.

Uri Zvi Greenberg (1894-1981) was born in Poland and escaped to Palestine as a Holocaust survivor. His book, Rehovot hanahar: efer ha'illyot vehakosh (Streets of the river: The book of dirges and power), which includes Greenberg's many poems on the Holocaust, was published by Shocken books in 1951.

Milton Teichman is co-editor of the anthology, Truth and Lamentation: Stories and Poems on the Holocaust, published by Illinois University Press in 1994. He is Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.