In the City of Slaughter Adapted from the Hebrew of Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik. In memory of Pesi Burghauser (b. 1880, Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary – d. circa 1941-2, place unknown)^[1]

Go into the City. See the square.
Place your gaze & touch upon the trees.
Place your gaze & touch upon the stones.
Place your gaze & touch upon the savage frieze
Made of plaster walls by force the Forcer’s force disowns.
Place your gaze & touch upon the plaster where
Calcimine is maculated with the lees
Flicked from shattered, voided human symmetries.

Go toward the ruins. Walls are split.
Lapses grow. Profundities extend.
Hearths are lacerated. Gashes are
Mouths, and mouths are gashes nothing tries to mend.
Traveler, arise. Although it’s far, it’s not as far
As you’d like. Although it’s near, you’ll find that it
Isn’t near enough, my friend. Arise, and spend
Steps, for feet (if not the mind) may comprehend.

Sink your feet into the plumes & quills.
Sink your feet into the sphagnous face
Of a damp, unstable precipice—
Into parts of parts, and traces of a trace—
Vellum traces honored by the Scribe’s serrated kiss.
Mortuary hills & chills & bloody rills
Constitute some deeper terror’s carapace.
More awaits you. Do not pause upon the place.

Some constituents cannot agree:
Springtime’s acrobats of sunlight scale
This black-blistered carnascape. The spun
Basil’s smells with those of Slaughter inter-flail.
Myriad fauchards of gold impale & slit the sun.
April’s musk & Timelessness’s butchery
Coalesce in Fortune’s thorax. Things don’t fail
In their function. Sun suns. Blooms bloom. Wailings wail.

Come into the courtyard. See the mound.
On it splays a Talmudist and his
Dog, beheaded with the selfsame axe.
Their polluted blood combines upon the ooze
Into which the swine relax their noses as they tax
All the filth for such delights as may be found
Underneath that mellowing, putrescent glaze—
Underneath that effervescent charnel gauze.

It will rain tomorrow. In a spare,
Single stream the blood will wash away.
Blood is powerless to cry from seas
As it cries from Slavic loam that can’t mislay
Massacres excruciating Jews with memories,
Each Jew having his distinctive Over There.
Everything will be, within the day,
As if it never was. This is why I say:

Climb upon the roof, and take your stand
In the darkness, where the shadow of
Death suspends itself among his wrecked
Fellow shadows. From within a naked grove,
An indignant hive, a cryptic sleeve, these eyes affect
To address you. They appear to reprimand
With the terror of their vacancy. They rave
Through the only question they’re allowed to have:

Why so harrowing a life? Oh, why
So deranged a death? The addled shades
Do not answer. Who can tell me where
Wisdom may be found? Relaxed within the braids
Of concordant shadow is a spider. From her chair
Synthesized of silk, surveying radii
Coalesced of Incident, the spider raids,
Hoarding what she takes from where her gaze invades.

Spider, spider, please disburse your gold!
Tell me tales of passionately rent,
Shredded bellies filled with feather vanes!
Tell me tales of pullies & defilement!
Tell me tales of babies Ignorance alone maintains,
Scandalously nuzzling against the cold,
Heavy, vandalized, and nuptially bent
Shape Maternal Love (till now) was lent!

And the mother’s not without her tale.
No one is without ordeals that lance.
I know stories that can end the world.
Fold & pack your tailor-fresh alarm. Advance.
Move yourself to somewhere Evil’s finger, gently curled,
Hasn’t tickled: places still behind the Veil,
That have never hosted her offhanded glance,
Much less the elation of her loathsome dance.

Take the staircase to the cellar where
Overwhelmed inside a heptagon
Of the panting & uncircumcised
(Past redemption, waiting to be set upon)
Is the daughter in the presence of the paralyzed
Mother, mother in the presence of the fair
Daughter when the gasping Slaughter is anon,
During it, and as the Slaughter’s antiphon.

Who can disengage the raving clasp?
This terrain of violation is
Spied by brother, husband, father, son.
From behind the cellar casks & boxes, his
Gaze is fastened to the Christ-extolling, clammy ton
Of defilement that wincing maidens gasp
Underneath, while Vital Force & Body dis-
Order into many a sad synthesis.

Those unswallowed by the carnage (stained
Outside, inside, body, soul) appear
Just as soon as they awake, and race
To the Rabbi, asking: “At this time of year,
Is my wife permitted my legitimate embrace?”—
Heeding whatsoever he will have maintained.
Custom is a steady gear. For Custom’s sheer,
Grey diversion, shall we bless the Engineer?

I will bring you to their improvised
Places of asylum: septic dents,
Pigpens where the heirs of Maccabees
Cower, Holy Heaven’s carnal documents,
My original aristocrats upon their knees,
Lutes that amplify My Name, the unsurmised
Garden, Rock of Zion, the specific sense
Oriented, and the Force that orients.

How the lions skitter off like mice!—
Skitter off like insects! They are sealed,
Sealed in death. At daybreak, he espies
In the sooty gutter some cadaver, peeled.
It’s his father’s. As if something in the earth defies
Savagery, however, there extends a spice-
And acanthus-studded, linden-laden field.
Now descend into the incense it would wield.

In the garden there’s a simple shed.
Wait to enter till the sun descends.
Wait till bleeding clouds are dressed with flame.
Then, undo the lock whose coldness recommends
That you turn around toward the Place From Which You Came.
Do you feel the Dread inside? It’s thick as bread.
It distinguishes, and blends. It rends, and mends.
Do you feel the Dread? It is, and just pretends.

Underneath a heap of wheels are crushed
Bodies. Concentrated spokes extend
Murderward. A death-throe agitates
Vernal pools of blood. And soon the moans depend,
Hanging in the clouded grief. Observe the Bird. It waits,
Wings unfurled, until the abattoir is hushed,
And she hides her face inside the umbral bend,
Thus to hide her barren sob from foe & friend.

Rabbis have debated it from all
Possible perspectives, and they can’t
Manage to deduce the least repose.
Close the gate behind you so that you can grant
Darkness your attention’s amethyst & jasper rose.
Praying for the idiom to voice a squall,
You would settle for a monophonic chant.
What can you produce? A meager canine pant.

Thus the sob remains in you, as in
Ambush, hankering to carry you
Over the terrain of barren dreams.
But continue on your way. Arise. Adieu.
Taking cover underneath the City’s fog & screams,
Scrutinize the graves, each fastened by a shin
Of clandestinely collected, lunar-blue
Soil by a trembling, depleted Jew.

Though your heart be deep in bitterness,
Though you yearn to bellow like an ox
Staggering beneath malnourishment,
I shall ratchet shut the rack-&-pinioned locks
Of your throat’s canals. The Spirit passes through the vent
Slashed into the calf’s extent. But nonetheless,
If there’s compensation for the Force that knocks
Life from Flesh, what would it be? My weakness shocks.

Please forgive Me! Lowly of the Earth,
You are burdened with a Pauper God!
When you visit My abode for alms,
And you separate the doors to see Me plod
Through such degradation, and you wonder how the Psalms’
Author deigned to name Me “Holy of the Earth,”
And you fail to find Me a pathetic fraud,
I behold the World I made. And I am awed.

And I grieve for you! I grieve for you,
Children! The importance that would be
Found in dying (and the very place
It would pulsate) is for you a cavity.
Oh, a Pointless Death is like bolt of burning lace!
I maintain the Silence nothing can subdue.
Nothing is quite real, and everything you see
Stresses only Pain’s substantiality.

What does the Shekhinah^[2] say? She’s safe
In a solitude that few can weigh.
I Myself will visit graves tonight.
I Myself will condescend to see the clay.
I Myself will rivet cold, spline-shaft-&-bushing-tight,
Bright attention on the Mutilated Waif—
On the corpses of the man who sold the hay,
Of the haughty Rabbi, of his Protégé.

Turn, and leave the mortuary green.
April saves her choicest self for dark.
Lowering your tightened body, pluck
Tattered stubble, lift it to the open ark
Of the Firmament, and say: “My Nation, torn from muck!—
Havoc’d, execrated, muddy & obscene!
Can these dregs receive again Creation’s spark?
Take it all, Unfathomable Patriarch!”

Turn, and leave the mortuary green.
Mercy saves the strangest Jews for light.
See them in the Synagogue. And hear them cry.
Hear them cry & caterwaul about their plight.
See them beat their chests with sweaty fists, demanding: Why?
For your heart’s become a desolate ravine.
No, it isn’t just that Vengeance (be it slight)
Doesn’t grow, but nothing grows where Vengeance might.

Why do they accuse themselves? Explain.
Look at them deploying Gall & Art
To atone for…what? Explain to Me.
How did this bizarre self-laceration start?
Can the penniless commit the sin of usury?
Can the destitute “improperly obtain”?
Can the man whose chest was hatcheted apart
Sin the sin of having a “disloyal heart”?

See them beat their chests, demanding: Why?
Can he be benumbed who’s made of smoke?
Who dares tell the impotent he “ought”?
Can a man be “haughty” while they let him choke?
Can the battered, spattered brain maintain “improper thought”?
Can the eyeless sin by a “begrudging eye”?
Can the severed larynx sin by what it spoke?
Can the yoked transgress by “casting off the yoke”?

Let them raise their fists into the air!
Let them raise their fists against My reign
That has yielded twenty centuries
Of deranging, endless, stupefying pain!
Temple columns shudder! Mourners fall upon their knees,
Yearning for the Sacrament of Tearful Prayer.
I shall guarantee that they (despite the strain)
Cannot mourn the mournful. Let it thus remain.

Build a wall around your heart: a wall
Made of iron, copper, stiffened rage.
Thus your heart shall be a serpent pent
In its nest, until (exhausted by the wage
Of starvation & captivity, all patience spent)
One offence inclines the bright, exalted squall
Narrowed to a silver, maxillary gauge
For the actualization of an urge.

Creatures that awoke to Dread prepare
For their sleep amid Confusion, Dole,
Devastation, Fretfulness, Disgust,
And (not quite accountably) Regret. The whole
Mouth is like a backstage area where words adjust
Their coiffure, and wait to step upon the bare
Stage before an empty theater. The soul
Is a convict on Contingency’s parole.

There is no effulgence in the eye.
There is no effulgence in the breast.
There is nothing to anticipate
Clarity of light. The fingers are addressed
To the Darkness, searching for a buttress. Wicks relate
Fallow smoke. The geriatric horse, awry
With exhaustion, sadly learns that he is pressed
Under Destiny’s preposterous behest.

This is not a legend meant to show
Anyone Condolence’s reprieve.
See the Preacher climbing to the cracked
Podium to diagram, construct, and heave
Vehement cliché which smolders like a broken pact.
Elders nod. Their juniors yawn. The rivers flow.
Everyone is caught within Extinction’s sieve:
Everyone, no matter what they may believe.

Listen, all you Citizens of Clout,
Nobles, Keepers of the Civic Flame,
Payers of a celebrated due,
Proud to be the Proud Protectors of the Lame,
Eager for (if nothing else) the semblance of the True:
Do not let your pity touch this vile rout.
They are wholly undeserving of the name
“Victim”: they have made a peace accord with Shame.

Calling in the manner of some sore
Peddler billing products to be sold,
They vociferate with posture bent:
“Oh, behold my dad’s cadaver!” “Oh, behold
My demolished skull!” The rich extend magnificent
Arms, dispensing bandages as if they were
Needle-laced of gold. The wilted beggars, told
“Go away,” comply, and find themselves consoled.

To the cemetery, beggar! Bore
For the substance of your greatness. Load
All the bones into your satchel. Bind
Everything upon your back. Pursue the road.
At the country fairs, along the lanes whose ruts unwind
To the gates of busy towns, display your store.
Tune yourself to the laméntatóry mode,
And perform your grey, dilapidated ode.

Sing your service. Hope for an Amen.
Counter their revulsion with a roar.
For such privileges you’re pedigreed.
Plead for the Compassion of the Carnivore.
Throat reduced to squalid fibers, lips abraded, plead
For the Nations’ Mercies. As you stretched them then,
Stretch your arms for all the Nations to ignore.
Everything will be just as it was before.

What are you still doing here, Trustee,
Guardian of Images whose warm,
Lunar, moldering daguerreotones
Soften into nickel katydids aswarm?
Rend your soul to feathers. Shed your tear upon the stones.
Your immaculate complaint is eerily
Like a child’s whimsically-proportioned form.
Send it out to deliquesce into the storm.

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1. Composed in response to the first Kishinev Pogrom (April 19 – 20, 1903), in which “…47 Jews were killed, and 92 severely, and 500 slightly, injured. Great material losses were inflicted on the Jewish community: 700 houses were destroyed; 600 stores were pillaged; 2,000 families were utterly ruined” (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906). ↑
2. God’s locally-specific, feminine aspect ↑