Moshe Leib Halpern (1886-1932) was a Yiddish poet who lived and wrote in America. His poem “Your Life” appeared in the October 1949 COMMENTARY. The present poem was translated from the Yiddish by Jacob Sloan.
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Restless as a wolf, and restful as a bear,
The savage shouts in me, boredom lends an ear.
I am not what I think, I am not what I will.
I am the magician, and I am the magical.
I am a mystery that wearies its own bones,
Agile as the wind, and anchored to a stone.
I am the summer sun. I am the winter cold.
I am the rich fop who scatters coins of gold.
I am the tough who saunters, cap thrust on a side,
And, whistling, steals away his own precious time.
I am the violin, the flute, too, and the bass
Of three old musicians, playing in the market place.
I am the children’s dance, and in the light of the moon,
I am the fool who longs for the far-off land of blue.
And when I pass by a tumbledown old house,
I am the desolation there that stares out.
Now am I the terror, without, before my door.
The open hole that’s waiting for me on the moor.
Now am I a candlelight that burns memorial
Superfluous, a print on gray-dust-covered walls.
Now am I the heart—the sad look of woe
That has longed for me a hundred years ago.
Now am I the night that bids me to be done,
The heavy twilight mist, the quiet evening song.
The star overhead up on high, far, remote,
The rustle of a tree, a bell’s peal, smoke. . . .
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