They tried to dry it out with their matzos, They tried to trick it with their candlelight. They shoved its face into their dusty tablets, Those gates that would remain forever shut. The Jewish peacocks on the chairs and sofas, The Jewish milk forever going sour, My father’s crutch, my mother’s lacy cap— All hissed at me: You wretch! You wretch! Their love? But what about their lice-eaten braids, Their crooked, jutting-out collar bones, Their pimples, their herring-smeared mouths, The curve of their horselike necks. My parents? But growing old in twilight, Hunchbacked and gnarled, like savage beasts The rusty Jews keep shaking in my face Their stubble-covered fists. “You outcast! Pick up your miserable suitcase, You’re cursed and scorned! Get out!” I’m leaving my old bed behind: “Get out?” I will! Good riddance! I don’t care! 94 He did get out—as did Elijah and, of course, Babel and his hero. What they found outside, after 1917, was much bigger than the wonderful and shameful life