1
Not you, Allen Ginsberg,
nor you, the Jewish God of Revenge,
nor his five-thousand years old people,
shall hear my Kaddish,
but you, Gentiles, shall hear it,
here,
in Europe.
I, the uncircumcised,
a child of the baptized children
of a thousand years, -
before your eyes I grew a mourner’s beard,
before your eyes I tore my garment.
I, a despairing creature of humankind,
with a black hat on my head together with
nine others
to make up the tenth man,
each wearing black hats on their dead heads, -
I say Kaddish,
here,
in Europe.
And I bury my horrified eyes in my hands
which are not stained with the blood
my lying, spectacular century has shed,
and in both my palms I hide my bearded face,
blushing with shame –
I cry out with pain:
Yisgadal…
And I cry out again:
Yisgadal Ve-Yiskadash…
hoping that my mourner’s outcry
will stir up your Gentile memory –
Europe, remember –
Yisgadal…
2
Remember,
among us there are still innumerable innocents
who don’t want to know about the guilt
and who hide the guilty ones
and the henchmen of the guilty.
When called upon to testify, they kept silent,
unmoved like rocks,
like water seeping through sands,
they stayed silent and said nothing.
Not that they hailed
the guilt of the guilty;
not that they live now in peace
and the unbearable burden of guilt
does not plague their conscience –
they merely kept silent,
and by their silence
they helped to conceal the guilt,
to shield the guilty, and thus
enabling them to come back to the fold.
Innocent though they may be themselves,
yet they continue their silence –
Yisgadal Ve-yiskadash…
3
But you around and among us who behave
as if unburdened by sin,
what has become of you in Europe?
Into your unwinking eyes I cry out
the great Yisgadal:
the sin is mute,
and all of you who kept silent in Europe
are the sin’s unseen upholders –
Yisgadal Ve-Yiskadash
4
Just listen to the conscience you have
Abandoned,
its sights and its cries
for the un-mourned,
the un-remembered,
the silenced ones,
the forgotten without name or trace
- Yisgadal…
the known and the unknown,
those inscribed on the walls of the rebuilt,
star studded temples,
and the not so inscribed –
the sentence of the exterminators of peoples
has united them all who were dispersed
and apart,
divided and different by language –
these differences counted for nothing:
they perished in the common language
of silence,
their last common language;
now they are one and the same,
with and without
their one-time otherness and similitudes –
Yisgadal…
Sunk deep under ground in Europe,
a third of a whole people has perished
Yisgadal…
5
I will answer the heckler, too,
who from the far corner of the market place
throws at my gray head his catcall:
“Not only them,
they killed others as well!”
To you I say:
It is true, they killed everywhere,
in wars and in no-wars,
and our concern is with the crimes of all times
and not only with those who carried them out
but also with those who looked on…
But while mourning our murdered sons and
daughters,
is our sadness to detract us from calling
to book the murderers?
You faceless heckler from the far corner
Of the market place,
Show me one other people in Europe,
A third of whom has been done to death?
According to their own lawless laws,
the killing of a single soul is not less
of a crime than the killing of six millions,
and of the millions among other peoples.
But let’s not confuse the issue at hand –
you man of Europe who has hidden your face –
and let’s not play the numbers game,
which figure comes first in the counting.
Let’s face squarely the terrible total
Which boggles the mind…
Don’s mix up the terms
and categories,
for in the fog of generalizations
the murder is getting wrapped up
and hidden from view.
Six million killed with one motive alone,
is six million murders, one by one –
no thought-up fiction this but a fact! –
This was the most resolute genocide act
directed against a whole people.
Yisgadal…
6
And furthermore I say:
Your innocent faces you lent to the murderers
in Europe,
- He Who Maketh Peace in His Haven – your human image you lent to inhumanity, knowing or not knowing what has been lost in Europe.
- shall bring peace to us -
And a contended voice answers for those
who became smoke and dust in Europe:
- and for all Israel…
And my minyan of the nine shot men in their
black hats
murmur with black lips, in your stead, the end
of the kaddish:
- and so we say Amen.
But I, in Europe, start all over again:
Yisgadal…
7
And now leave me, you Gentiles
whose plagued conscience I am,
leave me with my feverish eyes
hidden in the wet palms of my hands,
my forehead furrowed with sorrow,
leave me alone with the nine shot men
wearing black hat, their lips blackened
and their black beards frozen in silence,
leave me alone,
and depart!
8
Go away, not looking back,
and search your souls!
You, too, the heckler,
who carries a stone in your pocket,
depart unseen from the back rows
where you are hiding,
don’t look back,
I don’t want to see you.
Remember, and look at your faces,
feel them in the dark back streets,
and you, the heckler,
with the stone in your pocket,
throw in into the silent gutter
of the back street.
- Yisgadal…
9
Don’t go into your dirty inns
or the noisy whorehouses
with the excuse
that one has to forget!
Forget you will anyway.
Rather go home
to your happy or unhappy families
who have survived unhurt,
a man to his wife,
a wife to her man,
go back to your children and parents,
to your brothers and your kin,
your friends, the happy and unhappy ones.
When you arrive at your homes, look closely
at each other’s faces –
Yisgadal…
10
But before you enter your houses,
which are your boasted castles in Europe,
wash your hands and your faces,
whether or not you have lent them to others,
and wipe them with a clean towel
so that you remember a bit longer
my blind and echoing outcry,
until the clean cloth has soaked up
the wetness of your hands and your faces.
Yisgadal…
11
And now, my fellow men,
we have reached the end of remembering
our forgetfulness and our shame,
the bygone ages and the better times to come,
but foremost, the history of our days –
that history which is us and ourselves:
the dead and the living cannot be parted
in this, our twentieth century –
the living and the dead are invisible,
the guilty and the innocent alike –
let each one live his life as best as he can –
Amen…
12
Go away, then,
The commemoration has ended.
13
Oh, Allen Ginsberg,
Oh, Mighty God of Revenge,
and the remnants of his five-thousand years’ old
people,
I have done my last human duty,
and the gentiles, my own people,
have left me,
the uncircumcised that I am.
Left alone in my desolation
to die in Europe
amidst the black silence
of the nine shot men wearing black hats,
I am afraid.
In the market places of ruined Europe
At midnight, wearing my mourner’s beard
And my torn garments in mourning,
I call out
in a voice hoarse from shouting
and with a dried up throat,
afflicted with fear, -
I am here,
and contented, I say Kaddish
for myself…
-Yisgadal…
-Yisgadal…
-Yisgadal…
English version by Jacob SONNTAG
© by PONT Publishers, Budapest
