Der fremder in der fremd
Gedenkst? Do you rememberwhen you were a strangeramong strangersa fremder on papirna stranger without papers?Gedenkst di frages? those endless questionsVer zayt ir? fun vanen kumt ir?who are you? where are you from?why are you here and not there?Ver zaynen geven ayere shkheynim?who were your neighbors? where was the school?what work did you do? what can you do herethat you couldn't do there?Nokh amol for the third fourth fifth timeVer zayt ir? fun vanen kumt ir?who are you? where are you from?why are you here and not there?Ver iz der man? ver iz di froy?who is this man? who is this woman?un di papirn? and their papers?un dos kind? and this child?did you find it here? or bring it from there?do you have a passport? for him? for her?farn kind that one with the dark hair?Nokh amol for the tenth eleventh twelfth timeVer zayt ir? Fun vanen kumt ir?who are you? where are you from?why are you here and not there?who do you know here? who did you know there?where will you sleep here? how did you sleep there? un ayere khaloymes:what do you dream of here? what did you dream of there?where will you work here? what work did you do there?and why can't you just work there? Vu iz di vize di grine karte der pasportvisa? green card? passport?photo? from here and from there? and why did you cut your hair?un dos kind? and why did you bringthis child here and not leave it there?Nokh amol for the eighteenth nineteenth twentieth timever zayt ir? fun vanen kumt ir?farvos zayt ir do? un nisht geblibn dortn?why are you here? and why didn't you just stay there?
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- November 9, 2023
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“Der fremder in der fremd” from Her Birth and Later Years: by Irene Klepfisz.
Published by Wesleyan University Press in 2022.
Copyright © 2023 by Irena Klepfisz.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Irena Klepfisz (Brooklyn, NY) taught Jewish Women’s Studies at Barnard College for 22 years. She is the author of four books of poetry including Periods of Stress, Keeper of Accounts, Different Enclosures, A Few Words in the Mother Tongue, and a collection of essays Dreams of an Insomniac. She was co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology. An advocate of the Yiddish language and active in its renaissance in the United States, she has published poetry and essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, Tablet Magazine, In Geveb, Sinister Wisdom, The Manhattan Review, Conditions, The Georgia Review and Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures. Her Birth and Later Years was a Finalist for the Jewish Book Award and winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry.
Middletown, Connecticut
"In terrible times poetry comforts, challenges, and sustains. Irena Klepfisz has been doing all these through the decades. With this book she gives us an enormous measure of grace. It is evidence of the work done to change the world--a vision of and commitment to justice in the largest sense. We are fortunate, all of us, to have it."
—Dorothy Allison, author of Cavedweller
"This book is an absolute treasure for the readers of Irena Klepfisz, for readers of poetry, lesbian literature, and/or Jewish literature...The poet's voice simultaneously transcends time and is also deeply embedded within it."
—Zohar Weiman-Kelman, author of Queer Expectations: A Genealogy of Jewish Women's Poetry
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