Hayyim Nahman Bialik Poems

When high noon on a summer’s day
makes the sky a fiery furnace
and the heart seeks a quiet corner for dreams,
then come to me, my weary friend.
...

Proceed thence to the ruins, the split walls reach,
Where wider grows the hollow, and greater grows the breach;
...

Neither daylight nor the darkness
See how silently I wander.
Not on mountain, nor in valley,
Does an old acacia ponder.
...

Summer is dying in the purple and gold and russet
of the falling leaves of the wood,
and the sunset clouds are dying
in their own blood.
...

Wind blew, light drew them all.
New songs revive their mornings.
Only I, small bird, am forsaken
under the Shekhina’s wing.
...

Take me under your wing,
be my mother, my sister.
Take my head to your breast,
my banished prayers to your nest.
...

Heaven, beg mercy for me!  If there is
a God in you, a pathway through
you to this God - which I have not
discovered - then pray for me!  For my
...

After my death mourn me this way:
'There was a man-and see: he is no more;
before his time this man died
and his life's song in mid-bar stopped;
...

Once more. Look: a spent old scarecrow
shrivelled face
straw-dry shadow
swaying like a leaf
...

A bough sank down on a fence, and fell asleep –
so shall I sleep.
The fruit has fallen; and what do I care
for my root and stock?
...