To The Hebrew People

Pogroms in Poland

Jewish race, flesh of pain,

Jewish race, river of bitterness

like the heavens and the earth, endure,

and nurture still your forest of cries.

Your wounds have never wanted for air;

never stopped you stretching out in the shade

to wring and renew your bandage,

redder than any rose.

The world has been lulled with your moans,

and it plays with the strands of your lamentation;

the furrows of your face, that I love so much,

like the deep cuts of a saw.

Trembling the women rock their child,

trembling the man cuts his sheaf,

the nightmare kneels in your dream

your word is only the miserere.

Jewish race, there even remains in you

breast and honeyed voice to praise your hearthstones;

to recite the Song of Songs, though broken

your tongue, your lip, your heart.

In your woman Mary still walks,

over your visage moves the profile of Christ;

from the slope of Zion they have seen him

call you in vain, as the day dies…

Seeing your pain in the Good Thief

he said that immense word to him;

to annoint his feet he looks for the braid

of the Magdalene, and finds it bloodied.

Jewish race, flesh of pain,

Jewish race, river of bitterness

like the heavens and the earth, endure,

and nurture your wide forest of cries.


~Gabriela Mistral