There is no monument on Babi Yar.
There's only a cliff, most vulgar headstone.
I am afraid. Today I became as ancient
As the Jewish race itself.
I became an Israelite
Who wanders the dust of Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now I bear the mark of nails.
And here, who could I be, but Dreyfus - myself?
Philistines betrayed and now judge me.
I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
Spat on, slandered, framed and condemned
While the porcelain dolls in their Belgian lace
Squeal as they stab their parasols in my face.
I can only be a boy in Byelostok
Watching blood turn the clean stream red again
And the barroom floor, over and over
As the rabble reek of vodka and onion once more.
I'm kicked back by a boot, too weak
Except to plead with pogrom bullies
Who say "Kill the Jews and Save our Russia!"
While the grain clerk assaults my mother.
O, my country, I know that you
Are international by blood.
But those with blood on their hands
Have replaced your purity with hatred.
I know the kindness of my land.
How vile, that without the slightest start
The antisemites have declared themselves
"The Union of the People!"
I can only be Anna Frank,
Transparent, as April's thinnest branch,
In love, without a need for words,
But only that we gaze into each other's eyes,
How little we can see or even guess!
Leaves are not allowed, we are denied the sky,
But still there's so much here to touch, so very gently.
We embrace each other in these darkened rooms.
"Here they come!"
"Don't be afraid - it is only the spring.
She's coming soon. Quick, your lips!"
"They're breaking the door!"
"No, that's only the ice on the river."
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees loom stern as judges.
Here all things scream in silence, and I,
Hat in hand, feel myself turning to gray.
And I myself, like one endless unheard scream,
Above the tens of thousands that are here interred,
I'm every old man executed,
I'm every boy or girl shot dead.
No cell inside my body can forget this.
May our National Anthem resound in thunder
When, finally and forever, the last of the antisemites
Is buried and forgotten on this earth.
I have no Jewish blood,
But hatred does not know that, it only knows how to grow
And to corrode, and I am hated like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a human.
