Elchanan Zeitlin, a gifted journalist and a sensitive poet, died in December 1942, at the age of forty, in the Warsaw ghetto. “A Funeral,” here translated from the Yiddish by Jacob Sloan, is taken from a collection of his poetry published in 1931.
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Sadly through the muddy snow a horse is plodding
With great tears staring in his eyes,
Pulling a black casket
His long head bent low.
A bundle of mourners like a bundle of chips
Huddles round the bier, shadowy and blind.
From far off it seems a blue forest is
Rocking slow and easy on the black wind.
Narrow and pointed, a sob, torn out of nowhere, hangs,
Sticking like a dart, in the damp-sticky body of day.
A tall Jew wipes a man’s crude tear from his curly beard.
A wild-eyed Jewess plucks clumps of hair like black feathers from her head.
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