Song of My Own Self, cont.

(The Chanukah Section)

9

Feh! The big chutzpah of the cockamamie schmendrik stands open and ready,

The dried spiel of the michigas loads the slow-drawn megillah,

The clear sheyner punim plays on the brown gray and green schmates,

The kholems are pack’d with the ongepatschkie tumul.

I am there, and OY do I help, I came stretch’d atop of the mishmash,

I felt its soft jolts, one tsures reclined on the other,

I jump from the goyim and seize the tuchis and latkes,

And roll head over tsibile and tangle my hair full of shpilkes.

10

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I kvel,

Wandering amazed at my own nakhes,

In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the lox,

Kindling a fire and boiling the kasha varnishkes,

Falling asleep on the gather’d schmutz with my matzoh and gefilte by my

side.

The shikse convoit is with her mishpoche, she shvitzes sparkle

and glick,

My eyes settle on the shlemazl, I bend at her prow or plotz joyously from

the mikvah.

The dreidl and treyf clam-diggers arose early and utzed for me,

I tuck’d my hair in my wig and went and had a good time;

You should have been with us that day round the chickensoup pot.

I saw the marriage of Moshe and Devorah,

the bride was a shayna punim,

Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and kibitzing,

they had hats like hockey pucks and large thick beards

hanging to their chests,

In a bank lounged the bride. The groom was drest like a crow, his

luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride

by the hand,

She had long eyelashes, her head was a wig whose coarse straight locks

descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to the seams of her stockings.

The runaway luftmensch came to my house and futzed outside,

I heard his pupik crackling the twigs of the woodpile,

Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and

ferklempt,

And went where he sat like a nudnik shlemiel and led him in and assured him,

And brought bobkes and fill’d a tub for his zaftig body and kreftig

feet,

And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some

coarse clean noshes,

And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,

And remember putting creamed herring on the galls of his neck and ankles;

Bubule! He schtupped me a week before he plotzed,

I had him schmooze with me on Shabbos: my tsimmes simmered in the yenna veld.