Niagara Falls by Haim Grade

From mountain peak to mountain peak sprang a rider, an Indian
With a head high-feathered, a bird on mount,
And here a horseshoe silver lost on the ground.
The horseshoe is the Niagara waterfall at America’s gladsome sill.
And over borders and valleys lies a bridge—for the stars a Milky Way:
A way for young couples in love twenty years
Who want their joy to hear in the waterfall’s noisy play.
The bottom rages, and from its boiling, which dazzles,
Fogs like veils of silk forth flit.
A cloud-break murky hangs ever low here,
And ever stands a rainbow; and the cloud-break splits
And round about the islands wooded, silent, covered under snow—
A forest in snow—ten thousand hanging candelabra, crystalline:
The sunshine in the Menorah branches glows
And in the water, mountains into silver dust ground fine.

And I raise my old sails too
And swim to your waters. I come to your stone-hewn steps.
Year in, year out, I come by pilgrimage to see you,
A glance to take upon your frothy crests.
My heart grows high when I see how too they grow—
Your billows, cradled on your stream—
With heads of lions and deer and buffalo
When they reach to the rocky edge of the abysm.

I become deafened with joy when your moaning I hear,
When birds fly away from you in blueness clear,
In the wink of an eye when into the abyss you spring,
You everlasting one, rainbowed and clouded.
You waterfall, brilliant and sunny-eyed,
At your sight I become again bold and young.

I am drawn to you, I fall with you, I am hurled down—
And rise on a cloud; with you akin
Splinter mountains and cities in the distances are found
Sealed in the mirror of your broad rivers within.

Your untamed power I sing in measured rhythm,
And in the mists of your diamoned dust
I see the thick beard and white locks of Walt Whitman,
Who sang to America an ode of praise glorious.

Your rainbow standing high over New York towers I view;
The wind dews my face with your pearly drops.
Always, always, thunder in my ears I hear you
And at night falls your waterfall my head atop.

And oftimes I see you, a woman, a stony giant, tall
And towering one formed of rocky blocks,
With knees, with breasts and face, built into the grounded wall,
And your back covered with your billowing locks.

And in the babel of New York’s glassy towers of time,
Where on the windows burn a setting sun like a desert with glowing dust,
In the windows burn out the desert storms meantime,
And cold electric shine engulfs the sea of panes.

I see from a cloud lowers a pale beam
That stands between earth and sky like a ladder with lunar treads.
And descend down the waves of the waterfall on him,
Winged with eagles’ heads, with lions’ heads, and with human beings’ heads.

Source: Jehiel B. Cooperman and Sarah H. Cooperman (selectors and translators).  America in Yiddish Poetry: An Anthology.  New York: Exposition Press, 1967.

Read about Haim (Chaim) Grade.

Thanks to Sammy Hacker for bringing this poem to my attention.