From the book Sing, Stranger: A Century of American Yiddish Poetry
The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters,
yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. (Psalms, 93:4)
A piece of the Works of Creation in the midst of Civilization; a vestige of
Chaos without form and void illuminated with electricity; a remote corner of
unfinished world; the ruin of God’s first abode—
Niagara Falls!
Eternal water capering down an eternal mountain, as if a sea committing
suicide; as if nature wanted to take her own life; as if the Devil learned to
swim; as if the World Architect confined here the unrest of all times—
Niagara Falls!
Is it the aftermath of Creation or a sampling of the dying of the World? Is
this how the World looked in its mother’s womb? How it will look in its
demise? Is this a stubborn primeval ore that wouldn’t be mastered? Did the
Ineffable Name fall in here?
Niagara Falls!
No, those must be the tears of sufferers who, unable to rest, hurl themselves
screaming into the valley, the Vale of Woes . . . Yes, this is the flood of tears
of the wretched, and here is the rainbow over the abyss . . . Here is the bow
whose colorful hues mirror the multicolored hopes for a future and the tears
roar; their uproar spreads with a million voices, drowning out the solid,
tough mountains all around . . .
Niagara Falls!
And maybe it is my own heart, trembling, boiling, seething, bustling,
overflowing like a sea in tower-waves, whose echo wakes God and man
and world—the sleeping trinity which must awaken? . . . Is it my poor soul
capering down the heights? The “divine part in me,” a divine waterfall on
earth—a Niagara Falls?
Niagara Falls!
Perhaps this is the curse of an Indian witch, a blind, old “squaw” for the
violated freedom of her race which once danced to the ghosts at the shores
of the abundant Lake Ontario—the big, strong lake which has gone mad
since the map turned it into a shameful partition between two nations with
one language? And perhaps this is the witch herself, the spit of the lost tribes
whose fiery horses were transformed into waves and kick and neigh and slap
with their water hooves the lashing eddy performing an exuberant concert
for the mountains, passing the “Great Gorge” that breathes miracles?
Niagara Falls!
Yes, those are ghosts, primeval spirits of an extinguished humanity, of
another “once upon a time,” with no chains, no grammar, no ethics,
no science, no morals, no law . . . From the whirlpool of this awesome
cataract, the ghosts wink at me and speak a long-forgotten tongue I think
I understand . . . From the silver foam of the pulverized water mountains
they emerge big and sublime like thoughts, and sing and dance and flutter
with their wet wings, dripping pearls as the lips of a prophet drip prophecy.
Now they paddle off into the moiling whirling torrent passing the rocky
walls, now they swim back like veiled nymphs astride the rainbow over
Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls!
And overhead—the trains whistle, the factories hum, the bridges span and
seem to connect two countries . . . And the electrical wagons bustle and the
roar of the locomotives blends with the roar of the smashed water worlds,
and one wants to drown out the other: Civilization wants to scare Nature
and Nature—to shout louder than Technology. A war between Primeval
Spirit and the Spirit of the Time. And the stars look down pensively and,
winking their shining, celestial eyes, they hide in fear under the clouds. And
the mountains freeze in fear and shrug their mighty shoulders and their long,
giant shadows are swallowed in the mist.
Niagara Falls!
I stand bewildered and amazed, and ask: Who will triumph?
— I! shouts the Spirit of the Time—See, I harness the wild force to my
factories. Here are the reins and here is my whip!
— What God could not tame, I conquered. For “Now” is stronger than
“Was” and “Will Be” . . .
And the swoosh of the express train flew off in a silver smoke like a white
dove bathing in milk.
And the water falls and falls, as if it isn’t concerned. And it breaks down
from mountain to valley, and every drop is stamped with the seal of eternity,
bearing the secret of secrets: the cradle or the grave of the world.
Oh, Niagara Falls!
How long will it fall and fall, the screaming riddle with no solution? And my
question itself is drowned out in the thunder of crushing floods.
The Chaos “without form and void” and the “Let there be light” struggling
with each other, both surface from the abyss like two fighting serpents. One
twined around the other, they get entangled in the roaring water train that
rips on the reefs gazing out of the depths.
And ghosts and witches and thoughts and riddles and beliefs and languages
and races and gods and the “Red Jews” whirling in the Sambatyon of the
waves, and in the midst of this whirl-storm whirls my heart and my fantasy
and the deafening, monstrous chaos rises to the rainbow and higher, and
my questioning soul rises with it.
Source: Benjamin Harshav (ed). Sing, Stranger: A Century of American Yiddish Poetry. Stanford University Press, 2006
First published in the late 1800’s /early 1900s.
Many thanks to Sammy Hacker for drawing my attention to this poem.
Biography of Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923) from Sing, Stranger.
“Born in the village of Boshka, Suvalk district, Jewish Lithuania, then in Russia close to the German border. His father was a tailor for the Russian army. Rosenfeld lived in the town of Suvalk, studied in heder. After his marriage, lived with his in-laws and studied Talmud.
Also learned German, Polish, read modern Hebrew literature and Yiddish poetry. From the age of fifteen, he wrote Yiddish poems. In 1882 visited America, returned to his parents, who had immigrated to London, where he worked as a tailor, lived in dire poverty, and was drawn to the anarchists. In 1886 settled in America, worked in New York tailor shops as a handworker and then as a presser. Began publishing socialist propaganda poetry that found an admiring audience among the Jewish workers. His poems were sung in shops and at assemblies.
From working as a presser, he became ill; tried to earn a living by singing his songs and selling his books. After his third book, 1897, he became famous. In 1898, Leo Wiener, professor of Slavic literature at Harvard, translated a book of Rosenfeld’s poems, Songs from the Ghetto, into English. Translations into other languages followed, including a book in German with Berthold Feiwel’s translations and Lilien’s illustrations and a book in English, Songs of Labor and Other Poems, translated by Rose Pastor Stokes and Helena Frank. Rosenfeld got a position as a journalist. In 1905 his only son died at the age of fifteen and Rosenfeld was paralyzed in half his body. His collected works were published in New York in six volumes, 1908–1910. In 1913 he was forced out of the daily Forverts and eventually became isolated from the new world of literature dominated by the aestheticians of the Young Generation (in Yiddish, di Yunge). His poems and collected writings were published in many editions in the United States and Europe, and several of his poems were set to music and gained wide popularity. Rosenfeld was received in Yiddish criticism as one of the fathers of Yiddish “Proletarian” poetry, but he also wrote many national and Zionist poems, as well as personal lyrics of love and nature and satirical verse on the human condition and the Jewish scene.”