With blood cries the East; with pus, the West
the squares in suburbs scream atop pyres
Like scrolls of blood fires unfurl
every flame a cry of alarm
A howl from the heap of greed and plunder:
the body on a scale like a giblet for the butcher
Pyres of flags and flags of blood—
The whip frolics on flesh and on life
Dawn, streets and cities awash in blood
the greedy sword of plunder is never slaked
Somewhere chimneys shout smoke like gullets
the forced lives of the big and small
Somewhere pits haggle – a mile in the earth:
blood against gold and – done! It’s a deal!
All equalized. Skin sliced from bodies, its price
ferried by waves on the stock exchange
The price of skin pitilessly flayed
of a life in chains, of dying in need
The price of children in a mother’s womb
for anxious mothers, the price of a night
Freeze on the bodies, turned towards fire
nations walk bent with hands that are bound
Nations bound in chains of need
prices etched and branded on skin
From: https://ingeveb.org/texts-and-translations/the-forty-year-old-man
Date: c1952 (original in Yiddish); 2016 (translation in English)
By: Peretz Davidovich Markish (1895-1952)
Translated by: Rose Waldman (19??- )
From Troubles of The World 