Classic Poem

You leaned in your wooden chair
the women around you
imploring you to rise
and a leaf fell on my cheek ...

And each time the cover is lifted I come near.
Did you want me closer in death? Did you fear my visit
and see my shadow passing among the women?
Did you share my happiness
my voice filling the small rooms — " They have come " —
the noise of my table
and my whispers filling the small rooms,
and the mail,
and the sheaf of papers,
and my pulse beating like thieves on the roof,
and the knocking at doors?
You were to me the humble one living close with the neighbors ...
you became my distance and I ran ...
you became my ceiling and I took shade ...
you became my open space
I did not rise up
my gaze wandered shyly across the walls ...

You bequeathed me what is left to the living:
the tears of a blind man
and your beautiful patience ...
— who will come with a breeze from you? —
your ample contentment with little
and a black sheet
they threw across the coffin
decorated with your flowers ...
(who will take from my eyes his white hair, his calm face,
on the abandoned shelf?)
You bequeathed me your green branches in the garden of the house —
let your branches stir for those who come ...
It is your last celebration.

You bequeathed me your poverty, O impoverished one

A dock laborer who never rode the sea,
loading wagons in rooms which surrendered him to the streets.
Between the sun and the thunder of the trains
he uncovers on the gravel his bundle of food,
the floor covered with paint ...
A worker in the reed huts who loaded his days onto crates,
scattered them like fodder to the beasts of burden,
piled them up in logs
and burned them in the smoke
(when he saw me once cheating the scales he caught me,
then taught me to be hungry)

Kassid ...
To those who seek books (he did not read), to the one who keeps watch near the ruined wall of the abandoned widow, to the one standing behind the chair like a maid, to the condemned and the police detachment (Kassid will not bear false witness, let him be chained till dawn), to the one detained whom no brother bailed out, to the kinfolk, to the house mute and the teapot (like a child he carries it to friends), to the pains of the night, to doors closed by sorrow, to forgotten ones asleep on the water, to a family that clasps branches and emigrates, to the thief crying before him, to an idiot hiding his eyes in the palms of his hands, to the one who bleeds and is drenched in his own blood, to the one who knocks at the door pierced by a star, to the dead who appeared in the night, to poverty howling in the four corners.

Kassid ...
He was not perturbed when the guests scattered and returned in the dark demanding hospitality.