מײדל אָן זײף
- מײדל אָן זײף
[End Page 88]
[End Page 90]
- Girl Without Soap
As I sit so lonely, lost and desolateand tired of being poorthe idea came to me to write a songabout my poverty
I wear a heavy shirt of worriesstill one must do the washthe weave is so dark and yellowedresembling tarnished brass!
Worries swell and hurt my mindan iron presses on my brainIf only the storekeeper would be kind and givea little loan of soap. [End Page 89]
No he didn't give it!Stiff as starch he stoodMy pretty dark eyes could not sway himto let me have some soap.
I am estranged from fresh white washMy clothes are yellowed and gray with dirtbut my body longs to sing the songof a fresh and clean white shirt. [End Page 91]
Yiddish is Sarah Moskovitz' mother tongue. Her father, a Workmen's Circle Yiddish School principal, taught her to read and write in Yiddish before going to American Kindergarten. Since retiring from Cal. State U. Northridge, she has translated the Yiddish poetry buried during the Holocaust in Warsaw milk cans known as the Ringelblum Archives. Her book, Poetry in Hell, awaits publication. Her two published books are Love Despite Hate; Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Adult Lives (Shocken 1982), and Kumt Tsum Tish; Come to the Table; Bilingual Poems (Clara Press 2001). She has contributed poems to Charles Fishman's anthology Blood to Remember 2nd edition (Time Bend Books, 2007) and to Pen, Heshbon, and Pakn treger.
