QUEEN VASHTI GOES TO HER HANGING

"Look, Tzipele!  Through every street

the queen will be led.

The king has decreed her punishment

to be a bitter death."

"A Mitzve!  When the King called,

she should have gone!

And you, a commoner, in her place,

would have done the same, no?";

"Gone? What are you saying, Riivke-Kroyne?

I would have flown to him like a biird

And stood stark naked

before all the lordly eyes.

And to the King I would have said

in these exact words:

"Did you call?  Then here I am,

Achashverus, my beloved."

Then would the King have enclosed mme

in his red velvet coat

and would have angrily sequestered me

and commanded the hangman to kill mme."

"Feh, Dvore-Kroyn, you're not talking nice.

One shouldn't speak that way.

A girl who expresses herself in thiis way,

I've heard from my grandpa...";

"Make way!" -- The Queen strides

toward her severe sentence,

and above her lovely, youthful head

there flies a sparrow hawk.

She walks with quiet, measured steps.

Only her eyes speak, quietly,

and sad to all the

young tailors and maidens:

I go forever away from hence,

eternally away from you.

Only then will thou act the Purim play,

and remember me for the good.

"Make way!" -- The Queen strides

toward her severe sentence,

and above her lovely, youthful head

there flies a sparrow hawk.

translated from Yiddish

by Karen Alkalay-Gut