Nathan, no thought today.
Have you ever seen a world
With splendors so serene?
I’ll slap you
If you squeeze forth a thought.
Are you sick of living?
Live with all your limbs
And breathe sun like a midge.
Let us begin to return.
Let us think away our wealth
And squander thoughts at each turn.
Let us become holy peasants
With holy cows, on a holy pasture.
Let us eat porridge and milk
Let us smoke stinking pipes
Tell whoppers about elves.
Let us sing:
Die-donna-die, die-donna-die.
No words, all melody:
Die-donna-die.
I see, a cloud is gathering
On your forehead.
You’ll get a rap in the mouth
If you stop to ponder.
Today you must lock
The Thinker behind doors.
Today we are singing babes,
Can barely count to two.
Hold on to this
How grand it is:
One—echad.
One, separate and together
Still is—echad.
And again, and once again, echad.
Just hear how simple
How singular, beautiful, how sadly
beautiful
Is one—echad.
Little grass sing,
Little bee hum,
Fondle flower;
Clouding rain
Freshen the ways
Soak the lanes.
Nathan, night will soon be falling.
Let us sleep undreaming and unthinking
Like the peasants.
Let us lay away the ladder
Not go skywards this evening.
Let the angels do the climbing
Down and up, up and down.
Let’s catch a nap and forty winks.
And wake to greet a flaming east
With the melody:
Die-donna-die, die-donna-die.
I’ll break your bones
If you miss this melody;
If you add a word or tone.
It must be as clear as this:
Die-donna-die.
_____________
(2)
There is a certain kind of folk
I Who think for a year and a day
Till their head turns holy, holy.
But their body remains sod.
They look into a book
Their eyes roll up to God
But their feet and their hands
Remain dust and sand.
And over their belts,
And under their suits
Everything’s polluted.
They study fine words and recite them
They’re pilgrims to the sacred places
But let a tired wretch ask their grace—
Their hands close tight
And their hearts tighter.
Their heads lack all sense.
They think they’re stirring up the orbits;
But, poor mortals, they
Are lost beyond redemption.
Therefore I say to you, Nathan
Thinking is like notes to singing
And the songs live in the heart.
Let the heart think more serenely
And the head will stop its ringing.
I dislike the “pious Jew,”
The would-be know-it-all
Whose dripping candle soaks
The letters of his scroll
With clotted thought.
Take a light and light creation.
Bara—He created.
Berayshis—Creation.
God! Nathan, what’s the sense of thinking
about it?
Let us go together in rain and in snow,
In hot and cold weather.
And let us sing—
Berayshis was the world’s creation.
_____________
(3)
So it happened, exactly as I tell you.
One dawn, when I am strolling
in the wood
I see the morning coming up askew
And all of creation mad-and-mute.
The trees stand with their behinds to me
The birds hear my good morning,
never move,
A hare stares at me like a shrewish gossip
And the springwater says angrily,
“No thank you, Nahman, make no
blessing on me!”
The flowers have an awful stink
And everything I think gets tangled
And everything I say is silenced.
Might as well sling your foot on your back
and carry yourself away.
Nahman, what’s the use
When the whole world’s mad today?
Yet, knowing the universe is like a
human being,
For all that grows and all that flies
And all that crawls (poor thing!)
aspires to be—
I say to myself, jestingly,
“What is the universe, anyway,
But an imagination,
A hallucination,
A momentary passing-by,
A thought-up unreality?”
And, speaking so, I bang creation,
All of it, in the seventh rib.
An old tree let out a sob
That stabbed at my heart.
(But it did the job!)
For, with a hidden power
All the world began to be
And to dawn.
The trees showed me their face again,
The birds twittered,
The hare smiled,
The springwater begged:
“Nahman, make a blessing on me,”
And the flowers blossomed
Like the Garden of Eden.
A crow fell laughing like a child
And all their anger disappeared.
I breathed in the winey air,
And all was fresh, and all was fair.
A joyous shout resounded,
“Who is a hallucination?
Who is not there?
We are here, here, here.”
That was the way an angered world
Dawned, and shone and beamed.
And there began a screaming,
Shouting, twittering of varied voices,
“We are hereherehere,
We are hereherehere,”
Until I, too,
Stood there in the middle of the wood
And my voice shrilled like a ram’s horn,
“World, I’ swear by the morning star,
World, you are.”
_____________
(4)
I have hungered
Until I tasted bread and butter
And corporal absorptions,
I walked and my body walked with me
And each single thought
Shone through my skin-and-bones.
I climbed and my feet climbed with me.
And every contemplation glowed
With grand simplicity.
When night fell
I hungered until I tasted bread
And thought with joy
Alone in the dark
Of all the elemental things,
Which, being holy,
Sanctify and lull
Feet and hands and head.
Hungry, this morning I awoke
And in the sober light began to be
From absolute nothing.
The day, too, grew
From nearly nothing, black and
faintest blue.
Then to my darkened limbs
I gave command, “Let there be light.”
Thus the day and I
Grew wings of light together.
We were united
And, as one, loudly recited
“How goodly are thy dwelling places.”
_____________
(5)
Sometimes it seems to me I have it all
in my grasp
Suddenly—a shadow falls, a door
shuts—the moment’s past.
Nathan, I perceive much that is
wondrous, much.
“Mouth to ear I cannot hope to touch.”
Man, enveloped in a dream
Is shown the earth below
And, high above, a terrifying sky.
But isn’t something or other between—
Life—I think they call it so?
Somewhere a woman’s passionate,
there’s delight
In the warm seclusion,
The man’s reply.
Lest I succumb
Frightened I cry,
“See that Evil, nasty lout,
Seize him, beat him, drive him out!”
Nathan, take this down.
Take the Will to Good; a fine in-law,
welcome guest,
Sits at a wide board, belly-full of
the best.
But it’s the Will to Evil that I pity.
Devout Jews always at his neck
Starve him with their penances (poor
thing!) Until he faints for a hot meal.
And what is the villain after?
Good cheer.
The meaning of elation.
Consolation drawn of sorrow.
Tears that reproduce.
Lonely bygone ages
Increasing endless tomorrows.
Poor fellow, what’s he after?
Body. Guph.
Nathan, take this down.
At night, if you but have an ear
You may hear every gate of the mystic
worlds
Sobbing one word,
Guph.
Do you think no music’s in that call,
Which is all our mirth—all!—
Between heaven and earth
Before the shards are laid upon our eyes,
And is, when all is said, the lover’s song?
Well you know how worn my body is,
Yet my heart is weeping for that bliss.
For Evil is, when all is said,
union and togetherness.
Wonderful spite!
It is a trembling word
Fire and flame and the web of God!
—Woman.
Nathan, take this down.
What I mean is perilous to speak.
It is late at night.
Nathan, the speech I give you is not
for the ear
Where it may not (I fear) be heard aright.
Well, they’ll be yelling, “Perhaps he means
To sanction adultery!”
Indeed what do I mean?
My heart is breaking for the Will to Evil,
Which is, when all is said: Force. Lust.
Desire.
Strength and power.
Which is, when all is said, leisure
and verse,
And twin brother to the Holy Flame
When His and Hers merge into one.
Nathan, poor fellow, your eyes are
sticking.
You are falling asleep.
But do not leave me with my thoughts
alone.
Wake with me. Stay!
Nathan,
Take this down!