A Leopoldstadt Tableau

I have uncles and aunts in the second district.

The last snows trickle down from the rooftops

onto Leopoldstadt.

The gutter laps up

the erev pesach water.

Birds carry straw like crosses

to a great old window

of the Schiffshul.

Jews wet their fingers at the washbasin.

A young learner with a looking glass

on the Gemara is poking the

pimples on his face.

The stench of Germanified Yiddish, Torah, and business,

artificial with a grotesque light and shadows

seeking the Western Wall

as copied from old Jerusalem.

And on that side of the Danube:

hats and evening gardeners,

doctor apostates heal all illnesses

with a piece of Zuckerkandl.

_______________________________________________________

Ikh hob feters un mumes in zvayten bazirk

Di letste shneyen kapen fun di decher

oyf Leopoldstadt.

Der rinshtok khleptshet oys

dos erev-pesach vaser.

Feygl trogn stroyen vi kreytsn

zu an alt groys fenster

fun der Shiffshul.

Yidn netsn di finger beim kiyyur.

A yunger lerner, mit a spigele

oyf der gemorah, mutshet di

prishtshes fun ponim.

Tshad fun deytshmerish, torah un handel

gemlekh mit groteskn likht un shotn

Zukhn dem kotel maaravi

Vi oyf yener sayt donai:

Kapelies un ovntike gertner

Doktorim meshumdim heyln ale mekhlot

Mit a shtikl kandl-zucker.

Excerpt rom Yehuda Leyb Teller’s Hitlers araynmarsh keyn vin. About his Galician Jewish family who lived in Vienna before the forced expulsion. In his collection of poems: Lider fun der tsayt  (1940) Translated by A. Passmore. Written in Yiddish in the United States, Tellers Lider takes imagery from his journalistic reporting on Germany, Austria and Occupied Palestine where he traveled (illegally) in the late 1930s.