Booted aside, I am helpless:
I plead with the pogrom thugs
To roars of "Beat the Yids, and save Russia,"
A shopkeeper is beating up my mother.
o
my Russian people!
You are really international at heart.
But the unclean
Have often loudly taken in vain
Your most pure name.
I know how good is my native land
And how vile it is that, without a quiver
The antisemites styled themselves with pomp
"The union of the Russian people."
It seems to me that I am Anne Frank,
As
frail as a twig in April.
And I am full of love
And I have no need of empty phrases.
I want us to look at each other,
How little we can see or smell,
Neither the leaves on the trees nor the sky.
But we can do a lot.
We can tenderly embrace in a dark room.
Someone is coming? Don't be afraid-
It is the noise of spring itself.
Come to me, give me your lips.
Someone is forcing the door.
No, it is the breaking up of the ice.
Wild grasses rustle over Baby Yar.
The trees look down sternly, like judges.
Everything here shrieks silently
And, taking off my cap
I sense that I am turning grey.
And I myself am nothing but a silent shriek,
Over the thousands and thousands buried in this place.
I am every old man who was shot here.
I am every boy who was shot here.
No part of me will ever forget any of this.
Let the "Internationale" ring out
