Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky

The Little Foxes, Little Foxes

The Little Foxes, Little Foxes201 Into my wine garden, my vineyard, Sneaked the little foxes, little foxes, And at night they fill my house with ruddy light. They carry in their muzzles radiant rhymes, The little foxes—little foxes, And without my say-so, stick them in my poems. Indeed, they are minute, these small destroyers, Who bit the blossoms in the vineyard very long ago. For that, they have been rightly whipped in The Song of Songs: Chapter, verse, and sermon will rebuke them evermore. But the most beautiful of the ladies, That wondrous grazier, Shulames, With her ardent strophe stirred them up And set those small destroyers, little foxes, Forever in the Bible's seat of honor. Within this grand hotel of books most holy, They've become most pious and most good, And use their thieving rambles, that old habit202 In the darkest of dark nights for seducing poets. I'm proud—they wormed their way into my wine garden, my vineyard, That poor vineyard, fenceless, no protection, naked all around, And, in the middle of the night, in darkest excommunication They bring me a drop of wine, a ray of the bright sun. 423 va ]x n *ni pa 424 If a wicked hand desires to fence the road before them, The little foxes, little foxes Filling my house at night with ruddy light, That wicked hand could never keep them from coming. They have mated with my wine garden, my vineyard, And will bring me yet more wineskins of fresh wine. 425 rmn onsio nasn rmn onsio nxap ^T f?yn D*?KTI'D awy} onoa BKH ny ps Kan -ismVj? nyi ,D^Kay^ fnxn pa tryiytra K t?Kn; o pK oysnpoyx TT pKrfo |yn - I^SK v&i yna p i r^o TK 7a DOKH n n ^ D 10^1 'pK T^K; D TK n Ta t?oxn n iyi pK TK pv lyi p^ao oyi ,&KI pa KTX D^yil K fK DK 1 '! 7X tooyT n KTK DVyii K IKS DK 426 ...