11.
The stillness of the night disturbed your rest.
The piteous communication of coyotes
wept drop by drop into your breast.
So you went outdoors,
were joined together with the desert night,
encircled by mysterious distances,
surrounded by nocturnal fortresses.
But overhead —
An intimate, brightly-laden sky,
A low-lying heaven, heavy with pellucid pearls
and stuffed with sparkling spangles,
is about to fall of its own weight.
It must be lifted up,
supported by a set of chuppah poles.
A wedding in the black of night!
Here comes the bride, the bride!
Make way, here comes the bride!
Yitshok Elhonon Rontsh, or Isaac E. Ronch, was born in 1899 in Poland and spent much of his later life in Los Angeles, California, where he composed poems, essays and other works in Yiddish. This excerpt from section 11 of a translation of “In the Desert” was published in 1970.
The desert was the place in Southern California where Ronch felt most viscerally connected to desert scenes and experiences recorded in the Torah. For Ronch, the desert was a landscape that collapsed centuries and continents, and his poems set in the desert frequently blur the lines between his present day reality, visions, the ancient past, and the future.
If you’re interested in the original Yiddish, the entire poetry collection In Midber (In the Desert) is available to download here. If your name is Dara Weinberg and today is your birthday, a 1970 first edition copy of this poetry collection, with dust jacket, illustrated with drawings by Marc Chagall, and signed by Ronch, awaits you the next time you make the journey from Poland to Los Angeles.
Love,
Ellen