Poem beginning “The”
1926/ The
Exile 3 (Spring 1928)
Commentary
Ahearn, Barry. Zukofsky's "A": An Introduction. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1983. 20-37.
Dembo, L.S. "Louis
Zukofsky: Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972):
74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 298-301.
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry,
1908-1934. Cambridge UP, 2001. 166-174.
Ma, Ming-Qian. “A ‘no man’s land!’: Postmodern
Citationality in Zukofsky’s ‘Poem beginning “The”’.” In Scroggins (1997):
129-153.
Schimmel, Harold. “Zuk.
Yehoash David Rex.” Paideuma 7.3
(Winter 1978): 559-569. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 235-245.
Scroggins, Mark. Louis Zukofsky and the Poetry of Knowledge. Tuscaloosa: U of
Alabama P, 1998. 124-132.
Shoemaker, Steve. “Between Contact and Exile:
Louis Zukofsky’s Poetry of Survival.” In Scroggins (1997): 23-43.
Stanley, Sandra
Kumanoto. Louis Zukofsky and the
Transformation of a Modern American Poetics. Berkeley: U of California P,
1994. 51-70.
Tomas, John. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Jew: Zukofsky’s Poem Beginning ‘The’ in Context.” Sagetrieb 9.1 & 2 (Spring & Fall 1990): 43-64.
Woods, Tim. The Poetics of the Limit: Ethics and
Politics in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002. 27-33.
LZ’s
first major work, written at age 22, “Poem beginning ‘The’” is a parodic homage
to his modernist elders, and especially T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, published just four years previous. As with The Waste Land, LZ adds notes, in this
case upping the ante by putting them up front, and line numbers as if already a
canonical text, but absurdly numbering every line and in one instance a blank
“line” (noted as “The French Language”). The notes, which for the most part are
simply references to other authors and works echoed in LZ’s poem, are sometimes
sensible, sometimes comic and sometimes simply ludicrous. A few remarks on
“Poem beginning ‘The’” in relation to The
Waste Land can be found in the original version of “American Poetry
1920-1930,” The Symposium 2.1 (Jan.
1931): 73.
First Movement
Title “And
out of olde bokes, in good feith”: from Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400),
the Proem to the “Parliament of Fowls”:
For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
But now to purpos as of this matere—
To rede forth hit gan me so delyte,
That al the day me thoughte but a lyte.
4 A boy’s best friend is his mother:
there are numerous versions of a popular song with this title and refrain going
back to the 19th century.
8 From the candle flames of the souls of dead
mothers: LZ notes D.H. Lawrence here, which could refer to any number of
works, but perhaps most likely his first novel, Sons and Lovers (1913).
12 Tyrrhenian: sea bounded by the western
coast of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. LZ notes Aldous Huxley’s Those Barren Leaves (1925), a satirical novel set at an Italian
Renaissance palace owned by a wealthy Englishwoman near the coast of the
Tyrrhenian Sea where she gathers artists and intellectuals who carry on lengthy
discussions.
14 South Wind: 1917 novel by Norman
Douglas (1868-1952) set on the imaginary island of Nepenthe (based on Capri) in
the Tyrrhenian Sea where a cast of curious characters converse at length on
various, often hedonistic topics. The novel was immensely successful on its
publication during the war. The South Wind is a constant physical presence in
the novel and would be identified with the sirocco, hot dry winds that blow up
from north Africa into parts of southern Europe.
15 the age demands an image…: from EP,
“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Life and Contacts,” section II of Part I:
The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace […]
18 Mauberly’s / Luini in porcelain: from EP,
“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” (misspelled or misprinted in LZ’s poem), the opening
line of the concluding section, “Medallion,” of Part II. Bernardino Luini
(1480-1532), Milanese painter and follower of Leonardo da Vinci; this line in
EP is usually understood as alluding to a refined but superficial artist; see CSP 195.
18 Chelifer: Francis Chelifer is a
disillusioned poet in Aldous Huxley’s Those
Barren Leaves (see 12).
19 Lovat who killed Kangaroo: in D.H.
Lawrence, Kangaroo (1923), Richard
Lovat Somers is the Lawrence character who does not literally kill Kangaroo, a
charismatic political figure, but does so in the sense of refusing to carry on
the latter’s work as he is dying in the chapter “Kangaroo Is Killed.”
20 Stephen Daedalus with the cane of ash:
James Joyce, in both The Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1915) and Ulysses
(1922), Stephen Daedalus appears never to be without his ashplant cane.
21 les neiges: from François Villon’s most
famous line, “Mais où sont les neiges
d'antan?” (Where are the snows of yesteryear?), from the ballade, “Des
dames du temps jadis.”
22 Mary’s Observations: Marianne Moore
(1887-1972), Observations (1924) was
her second book of poems.
24 Kerith is long dry…: LZ notes here the
Irish novelist George Moore (1852-1933), whose novel The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story (1916) is one of several modernist
period versions of Christ after the Crucifixion. However, LZ is actually
echoing the original reference from I Kings 17:3-7 (Tomas 46): “[the Lord to
Elijah:] Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook
Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the
brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and did
according unto the word of the Lord: for he went and dwelt by the brook
Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in
the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook. And
it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there had been
no rain in the land.”
27 sacred wood: T.S. Eliot’s first volume
of essays, The Sacred Wood (1920).
28 Odysseus: alluding to James Joyce, Ulysses (1922), which takes place in a
single day and involves Stephen Daedalus from The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (see 20).
29 bibbing: moderate but regular drinking,
to tipple.
33 Il y a un peu trop de femme…: Fr. there
is a little to much of the female.
38 O the Time is 5 / I do!...: this
passage echoes the pub closing section of T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land Part II. LZ notes E.E. Cummings’ is 5 (1926)—is LZ or an editor
responsible for the (mis)punctuation of this title in the notes?
45 For it’s the hoo-doos, the somethin’
voo-doos: LZ notes this as “College Cheer,” although it echoes Vachel
Lindsay’s performative poem, “The Congo (A Study of the Negro Race)” (1914),
which includes variations on the chorus, “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,” as
well as mentioning “voo-doo.”
46 And not Kings onlelie, but the wisest men…:
from Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,
I.iv:
The mightiest kings have had their minions,
Great Alexander lovde Ephestion,
The conquering Hercules for Hilas wept,
And for Patroclus sterne Achillis droopt:
And not kings onelie, but the wisest men,
The Romaine Tullie loved Octavius,
Grave Socrates, wilde Alcibiades:
Then let his grace, whose youth is flexible,
And promiseth as much as we can wish,
Freely enjoy that vaine light-headed earle,
For riper yeares will weane him from such toyes.
52 Dalloway!: Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
53 The blind portals opening, and I awoke!:
possibly echoing John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
56 Not by graven images forbidden to us:
referring to the prohibition among the Jews against creating images of Jehovah;
see especially the second of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:4: “Thou shalt
not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
the earth.”
59 Spinoza grinding lenses: the Dutch
Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated from the
Jewish community of Amsterdam because of his views and made his living grinding
lenses.
60 Cathedral Parkway: runs east-west along
the upper end of Central Park, a few blocks from Columbia University, and
becomes 110th Street on the east side. The year LZ wrote “Poem beginning
‘The,’” his family moved to 57 East 111th Street (?).
Second Movement
Title An
International Episode: title of an 1879 novella by Henry James
concerning typically Jamesian cross-cultural encounters experienced by two
British friends on both sides of the Atlantic.
62 Peter Out: suggests the ending of T.S.
Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” (1925): “Not with a bang but a whimper,” although this
could also suit The Waste Land’s
trailing off in shored fragments.
66 ’Tis, ’tis love, that makes the world go
round…: presumably echoes a popular song, although LZ parodically notes
Dante here.
68 Jew goat-song: LZ notes Franz Werfel
(1890-1945), Czech-born German Jewish writer, who wrote the Expressionist play,
The Goat-Song (1921); an English
language production played in NYC Jan.-March 1926. The play concerns humankind’s
unredeemed animal nature. Goat-song is the original Gk. meaning of tragedy (tragoidia).
70 Not the old Greeks anymore: LZ notes
this as “University Extension,” which was a pioneering school for
non-traditional or adult students established at Columbia University in 1904 by
its long-standing president, Nicolas Murray Butler (from 1902-1945).
74 Il Duce: It. The Leader, i.e.
Mussolini.
75 Black shirts: Mussolini’s fascist
followers.
76 Lion-heart, frate mio: although
Lion-heart (Coeur de lion) refers to King Richard I (1157-1199), here it is a
pet name for LZ’s younger friend Ricky Chambers, mentioned several times in “A”, who committed suicide in Oct. 1926,
which accounts for the funereal imagery in the following through 109 (see
“A”-2.6.24, “A”-3,
which is an elegy for Ricky, and “A”-7.42.3). Frate mio: It. my brother; the phrase appears at least twice in
Dante’s Purgatorio.
110 And his heart is dry…: as LZ notes,
through 129 is a translation from the Yiddish poet Yehoash, pseudonym of
Solomon Bloomgarden (1870-1927), from the volume In the Weaving (1919-1920), whose work includes many adaptations or
imitations from other languages.
116 asilah:
an Arabic name meaning strengthened; here presumably referring to the Bedouin’s
camel.
132 “Tilbury”: LZ notes Edwin Arlington
Robinson’s Children of the Night
(1897), which includes a number of his most famous poems concerning characters
from the imaginary New England town of Tilbury.
132 “The West-Decline”: Cf. Oswald Spengler
(1880-1936), The Decline of the West
(1917, 1923; English trans. vol. 1, 1926).
133 “The Happy Quetzalcoatl”: Cf. D.H.
Lawrence (1885-1930), The Plumed Serpent
(1924) concerning an effort to revive Aztec myth. Quetzalcoati is the supreme
nature god in Aztec religion.
141 indomitaeque morti: as LZ notes, from
Horace, Ode II.xiv: “Eheu fugaces,
Postume, Postume, labuntur anni, nec pietas moram, rugis et instanti senaectae,
adferet indomitaeque morti” (Alas, Postumus, the fleeting years slip by,
nor will piety give pause to wrinkles, to advancing old age, to unconquered death).
146 “The Dream That Knows No Waking”: there
was an 1880s popular song with this title.
Third Movement
Fourth Movement
Title More “Renaissance”:
referring to Walter Pater, Studies in the
History of the Renaissance (see 176).
167 Plato’s Philo: Philo of Alexandria was
a first century Hellenized Jew who attempted to reconcile Greek (particularly
Plato) and Judaic thought through allegorical interpretation. Tomas states that
as a result the Jewish tradition considered Philo a traitor (54); whether or
not this is accurate, it is true that contemporary Jews of his day rejected his
work, and his considerable influence was primarily on the development of early
Christian thought.
169 flitches: salted and cured side of
bacon (AHD).
173 On weary bott’m long wont to sit…:
through 182 a parody of Edgar Allan Poe, “To Helen”:
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfum’d sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome.
Lo! in that little window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The folded scroll within thy hand—
A Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy land!
176 Pater: Walter Pater (1839-1894),
British essayist, whose conclusion to Studies
in History of the Renaissance (1873) was something of a manifesto for English
aestheticism.
180 Phi Beta Key: Phi Beta Kappa is a
scholastic honors society, which uses a symbolic key as a token of membership.
LZ was elected to Phi Beta Kappa while at Columbia.
184 Gentlemen, don’chewknow…: LZ’s note
identifies this as spoken by John Erskine (1879-1951), which indicates that
lines 164-167 are as well. Erskine was an English professor at Columbia
University, specializing in Elizabethan literature, as well as a musician and
novelist. He is best known as initiator of the Great Books movement, which
began as a General Honors course in 1921, taught using the Socratic method and
emphasized an extensive but core canon of classical texts, which presumably is satirically
alluded to in line 163, “Drop in at Askforaclassic, Inc.”
185 never wrote an epic: alluding to Poe’s
claim in “The Poetic Principle” (1850) that a poetic epic is a contradiction in
terms: “[Paradise Lost], in fact, is
to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in
all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to
preserve its Unity—its totality of effect or impression—we read it (as would be
necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of
excitement and depression. […] It follows from all this that the ultimate,
aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun is a nullity;
—and this is precisely the fact. […] The modern epic is, of the supposititious
ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of
these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poems were
popular in reality—which I doubt—it is at least clear that no very long poem
will ever be popular again.”
Fifth Movement
187 Gathered mushrooms…: LZ notes Robert
Herrick (1591-1674), “To Virgins, to Make Much of Time”:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
191 Un in hoyze is kalt: Yiddish, and in
the house it’s cold (?). LZ notes that this is a “Jewish Folk Song.”
197 your Russia that is free: the Russian
Revolution took place in 1917; LZ’s parents emmigrated from Russia in the
1890s.
199 “So then an egoist can never embrace a
party…: LZ notes the German philosopher Max Stirner (1806-1856), The Ego and His Own (1844; English
trans. 1907):
“A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a confession of
faith. For those who belong to the party must believe in its principle, it must
not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it must be the certain,
indubitable thing for the party-member. That is: One must belong to a party
body and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more or less—an egoist.
Harbor a doubt of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true Christian,
you have lifted yourself to the ‘effrontery’ of putting a question beyond it
and haling Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have—sinned
against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not e.g. a cause for
the Jews, another party.) But well for you if you do not let yourself be
affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.
So then an egoist could never embrace a
party or take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced
and taken up by the party. For him the party remains all the time nothing
but a gathering: he is one of the party, he takes part.
The
best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the more
the devoted mind for legality is lost, so much the more will the State, this
system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and quality.
With the ‘good citizens’ the good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy
and lawlessness. ‘Respect for the law!’ By this cement the total of the State
is held together. ‘The law is sacred, and he who affronts it a criminal.’
Without crime no State: the moral world—and this the State is—is crammed full
of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is the ‘lordship of
law,’ its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases where his
advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by crime” (trans.
Steven T. Byington).
205 Winged wild geese, where lies the passage…:
through 223 a translation of a poem by Yehoash (see 110) entitled “Cheshvan,”
indicating a month in the Hebrew calendar (Schimmel 243).
245 Trawtsky: Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)
Russian revolutionary leader; at the time of this poem Trotsky was locked in a
struggle with Stalin as to who would be the successor of Lenin as leader of the
USSR.
245 Tchekoff: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904),
also spelled Tchekoff, Russian fiction writer and playwright.
248 Angles: LZ
mischievously notes the Venerable Bede’s Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical History, which gives an account of the arrival of
the Germanic tribe Angli or Angles into Britain where they settled in what
became Northumbria, where Bede lived.
250 If I am like them in the rest…: LZ
notes Shakespeare’s The Merchant of
Venice through 265, from which he draws on passages from back-to-back
scenes in Act III (see also 262). From III.i:
Shylock: To bait fish withal: if it
will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned
my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and
what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you
prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us,
do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a
Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a
Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
253 Shagetz: or shegetz, Yiddish, a young
non-Jewish man, usually with derogatory implications of being rough or
untrustworthy.
254 Donne: John Donne (1572-1631), whose
“Elegy on the Lady Marckam” may be echoed in the following line: “Of what small
spots pure white complaines! Alas / How little poyson cracks a christall
glasse?” (Shoemaker 35).
255 leopard in their spots: from Jeremiah
13:23-25, where Jeremiah admonishes Jews who take up foreign ways: “Can the
Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Therefore will I scatter
them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness. This is
thy lot, the portion of thy measure from me, saith the Lord; because thou hast
forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood.”
256 says their Coleridge, / Twist red hot
pokers into knots: alluding to an epigram by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834), “On Donne’s Poetry”:
With Donne,
whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
262 It is engendered in the eyes…: through
265 from a song or madrigal in Shakespeare, The
Merchant of Venice, III.ii, sung while Bassanio is deciding on which casket
to chose (this song is quoted 3 times in Bottom
60, 175, 286):
Tell me where is Fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourishèd?
Reply,
reply.
It is engender’d in the eyes;
With gazing fed; and Fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring Fancy's knell;
I'll begin it, —Ding-dong, bell.
—Ding-dong,
bell.
266 I, Senora, am the Son of the Respected
Rabbi…: from Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), last stanza of the ballad “Donna
Clara,” in which the mysterious ideal lover of the aristocratic and virulently
anti-semetic Donna Clara reveals his identity:
Ich, Sennora, Eur Geliebter,
bin der Sohn des vielbelobten,
großen, schriftgelehrten Rabbi
Israel von Saragossa.
I, Senora, your beloved,
Am the son of the respected,
Worthy, erudite Grand Rabbi,
Israel of Saragossa. (trans. Emma Lazarus)
269 Keinen Kadish wird man
sagen: from Heinrich Heine, “Gedächtnisfeier”:
Keine Messe wird man singen,
keinen Kadosch wird man sagen.
Nichts gesagt und nichts gesungen
wird an meinen Sterbetagen.
No mass will be sung,
No Kaddish will be said,
Nothing said nor sung
On my deathdays.
Half-dozenth Movement
270 Under the cradle the white goat stands,
mother…: popular Yiddish lullaby, “Raisins and Almonds” (Schimmel 244),
from Abraham Goldfaden’s 1880 romantic operetta Shulamis. Goldfaden would undoubtedly have been a familiar name to
LZ in his youth as he is considered the founder of Yiddish theatre and lived
the last few years of his life in NYC, where on his death in 1908 the New York Times called him the “Yiddish
Shakespeare”:
Under Baby’s cradle in the night
Stands a goat so soft and snowy white
The Goat will go to the market
To bring you wonderful treats
He’ll bring you raisins and almonds
Sleep, my little one, sleep.
277 Tophet: city near Jerusalem
particularly identified with the worship of Molech and its practice of
sacrificing children. LZ possibly has in mind Jeremiah 19:14-15: “Then came
Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and he stood
in the court of the Lord’s house; and said to all the people, Thus saith the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon
all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have
hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words.”
280 Shulamite: the female beloved in Song
of Solomon (see 270).
281 In my faith, in my hope, and in my love…:
through 285 from Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), the satiric fantasy Peer Gynt (1867); 281-283 are from the
very end of the play, whereas 284-285 are from the end of Act III.
288 The Royal Stag is abroad, / I am gone out
hunting…: unidentified; LZ notes as “Popular Non-Sacred Song.”
291 Angles: see 248.
292 faisant un petit bruit, mais très net:
Fr. makes a little noise, but very neat.
295 katydid: a type of American
grasshopper, whose name is onomatopoeic of the distinctive loud noise it makes,
as mimicked in the following line, with euphemistic suggestion as well.
305 Baedekera Schönberg: puzzling reference. The usual assumption is that this
refers to the Viennese Jewish composer Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), who
controversially pioneered atonal music in the early decades of the 20th
century (Tomas 59). In context, however, this could be a high-falutin European
sounding female name. Baedekera suggesting the Baedeker series of travel books,
mentioned in T.S. Eliot’s “Burbank with Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar”
(1920), and thus a tourist perspective on high culture.
309 Our God immortal such Life as is our God:
LZ notes this line as from Bach and also from “Myself.” This line as well as
the phrase “errant star” at 311 are from a 1925 poem, “For a Thing by Bach,”
apparently a translation or adaptation of a Bach text that LZ published in Pagany (Oct.-Dec. 1930) and also quoted
many years later in “A”-18.391.12-17.
310 Bei dein Zauber, by thy magic: from
Beethoven, Ninth Symphony, fourth
movement (Ode to Joy): “By thy magic is united what stern custom parted wide, /
All mankind are brothers plighted, / Where thy gentle wings abide” (Schiller’s
text).
311 Open Sesame, Ali Baba, I, thy firefly…:
from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral suite, Scheherezade (1888), based on tales from the Arabian Nights (Tomas 59).
313 O my son Sun, my son, my son…: see
David’s lament for Absalom in II Samuel 18:33: “And the king was much moved,
and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he
said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had
died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (Tomas 61).
316 Aus meinen grossen
leiden mach ich die kleinen lieder: from the first stanza of a Heinrich
Heine song set by various composers”
Aus meinen großen Schmerzen
mach ich die kleinen Lieder;
die heben ihr klingend Gefieder
und flattern nach ihrem Herzen.
From my great sorrows
I make small songs;
they lift their ringing feathers
and flutter to her heart. (trans. Emily Ezust)
318 By the wrack we shall sing our Sun-song…:
through 330 adapted from Yehoash’s “Oif
di Churvos” (On the Ruins); see 110. Schimmel points out that LZ changes
the original “I” to “we.”
