And I murmured, “Do not touch the old woman.”
But you said: “Listen:—I will lay my hand over all the wild notes and sweet notes you have heard and they will be hushed. I will kill the songs that lie unborn in the earth and the sea and the cherry trees and in the white throats of birds and women and in the hearts of men.”
And I wondered how such a little one as you could hush so great a chorus.
But you came closer to me and said: “I have come to destroy the world for you, to pluck out every little blade of grass and every flower, to brush away the stars and kick over the hills and tear up all the fields.”
It was dark in the little room where we were and I sighed.
And you came closer to me and said: “I will gather up in a great, black bag everyone and everything and every God you have known and I will drop them into a great, black hole. And listen:—and then you will be alone.”
II.
The Synagogue
This street in the ghetto looks at night
Like a prison corridor,