november poem II

Like Itzik Manger's Hagar--
a housemaid in worn patent-leather shoes,
banished with her little valise, her heavy belly--
I am far afield in a world half-stifled with myth,
half-derelict,
paved with little stones, with half-forgotten languages.
Before I was born someone bartered
all our grand ideas for comfort.
Here where the snow will soon sit like so many swollen grain-sacks
I want to swallow those smooth stones at the wayside
and make of my stubborn self a mill.