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A strange sight
my dream showed me.
I journeyed
and came upon a land
there the soil does yield
grain and fruit in abundance
yet within her borders
not a bloom is to be found
and her inhabitants
a flower never saw.
There the sowers
without tears do plant
the reapers
joylessly harvest,
gravediggers
without weeping bury
weddings
without song are celebrated.
There yearnings
do not throb in the hearts
hopes are nipped in the bud.
I saw songbirds
hitched to the yoke
and a butterfly
tethered at the grindstone.
Their fiddles
they have beat into plowshares,
their harps
into sickles,
and from the parchment scrolls
of the prophets
they made themselves shoes.
From the Hebrew by Yanki Tauber
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