Ahasver (the Wandering Jew)
(Stefan Heym)
I saw by looking in his eyes That they remembered everything? And this was how I came to know That he was here, still wandering. For though the figure and the scene Were never to be reconciled, I knew the man as I had known His image when I was a child. With evidence at every turn, I should have held it safe to guess That all the newness of new York Had nothing new in loneliness? Yet here was one who might be Noah, Or Nathan, or Abimelech, Or Lamech, out of ages lost, ?? Or, more than all, Melchizedek. Assured that he was none of these, I gave them back their names again, To scan once more those endless eyes Where all my questions ended then. I found in them what they revealed That I shall not live to forget, And wondered if they found in mine Compassion that I might regret. Pity, I learned, was not the least Of time's offending benefits That had now for so long impugned The conservation of his wits? Rather it was that I should yield, Alone, the fealty that presents The tribute of a tempered ear To an untempered eloquence. Before I pondered long enough On whence he came and who he was, I trembled at his ringing wealth Of manifold anathemas? I wondered, while he seared the world, What new defection ailed the race, And if it mattered how remote Our fathers were from such a place. Before there was an hour for me To contemplate with less concern The crumbling realm awaiting us Than his that was beyond return, A dawning on the dust of years Had shaped with an elusive light Mirages of remembered scenes That were no longer for the sight. For now the gloom that hid the man Became a daylight on his wrath, And one wherein my fancy viewed New lions ramping in his path. The old were dead and had no fangs, Wherefore he loved them ?? seeing not They were the same that in their time Had eaten everything they caught.
The wandering Jew
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