Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GOOD NIGHT, WORLD, by JACOB GLATSTEIN



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GOOD NIGHT, WORLD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Good night, wide world
Alternate Author Name(s): Glatshteyn, Yankev; Gladstone, Jacob
Subject(s): Jews; Mysticism - Judaism; Judaism


Good night, wide world,
big stinking world.
Not you but I slam shut the gate.
With a long gaberdine,
with a fiery yellow patch,
with a proud stride,
because I want to,
I'm going back to the ghetto.
Wipe away, stamp out every vestige of conversion.
I roll around in your garbage --
praise, praise, praise --
hunchbacked Jewish life.
Damn your dirty culture, world.
I wallow in your dust
even though its forsaken,
sad Jewish life.
German pig, cutthroat Pole,
Rumania, thief, land of drunkards and gluttons.
Weak-kneed democracy, with your cold
sympathy-compresses.
Good night, electrified arrogant world.
Back to my kerosene, candle shadows,
eternal October, tiny stars,
to my crooked streets, humped lanterns,
my sacred pages, my Bible,
my Gemorra, to my backbreaking
studies, to the bright Yiddish prayerbook,
to law, profundity, duty, justice --
world, I walk gladly towards quiet ghetto light.

Good night. I'll make you, world, a gift of
all my liberators.
Take back your Jesus-Marxes, choke on their courage.
Croak over a drop of our Christianized blood.
For I have hope, even if He is delaying,
day by day my expectation rises.
Green leaves will yet rustle
on our sapless tree.
I don't need any consolation.
I'm going back to my very beginnings,
from Wagner's pagan music to melody, to humming.
I kiss you, dishevelled Jewish life,
I cry with the joy of coming back.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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