And to the town there began to come
Jews who had been driven from other places
And they began to rebuild the ruined houses,
And, first of all — the cold synagogue,
For half the walls of the cold synagogue remained
And because they were yet small in number
They only had need of the one shul.
And when the shul was finished with windows and doors
They placed the Torah in the holy ark,
A single Torah, which they had rescued
And brought with them from their home.
And from Maariv on, until late, they
Celebrated in the shul and were happy,
And their joy was tempered with sorrow,
Because they didn’t have their own Rov,
And their sorrow was greater still,
That no one from the town
Had yet appeared to return home.
And it was just as they became joyful again —
That they all suddenly halted, trembling
For they imagined they heard
A strange crying from somewhere far away.
And when they fell silent and listened closely —
Their terror grew greater still,
For they heard, in truth, as though from afar
Carrying, penetrating into the shul,
The long, drawn-out howl of a beast.
Furious and roaring at the beginning, as in a moment of devouring
In the next, thin and despairing, like the whining
Of a dog that rends its heart for the moon,
And at the end, quieter and quieter, sobbing
Which reminded them of the weeping of a man.
And when they ran from the shul
And listened in the midnight darkness —
They heard nothing more,
Aside from the thumping of their own hearts,
And the rustling of the singed trees,
Which jutted up from among the ruins
And spent their last leaves into the night —
For it was already autumn on the earth.
And they fell silent
And hurried to their homes.
And they thought that whatever had howled so,
Lay hidden beneath a wall or a chimney,
And that it waited quietly, lurking,
And soon would spring out and fall upon them…
And they watched, as in the sky
The moon suddenly crept out, as though from a cellar,
And uncovered the expanse between the ruins
And the surrounding wall of the enclosing forest
Which ringed the town on all sides —
They felt entirely anew the nakedness of the streets
And that the ruins did not belong to them,
And that they were strangers there.
And when they reached their houses
They stood a long while in the darkness,
And looked fearfully from their windows,
As the white light of the moon grew whiter and whiter,
And all the cracks in the ruins opened wide…
And so, in fear, they went to sleep.
And the moon turned its face from the town
And all the cracks in the ruins closed;
And the chimneys and heaps of ash
Returned to chimneys and heaps of ash.
And the shadows that had begun to rise up
And reach upwards with outstretched throats,
Fell back down among the cracks of the ruins,
And remained lying as the dead ought to lie.
For the moon was already far away, over the wood,
And the light filtered down through the branches and peered
Into the green eyes of the wolf,
Who lay exhausted by howling.
And the eyes of the wolf struck back,
With their greenness and with the same passion as the moon,
And in the branches of the trees remained hanging,
Stabbed one into the other, their beams,
Dripping with blood of white and green…
And the moon abandoned its dead beams
Left them hanging in the branches,
And fled away alone, beyond the wood.
And the beams hung there a long time, until
They began to tear themselves down from their gallows,
And fell, one by one, upon the wolf’s back
And pierced his hide, pierced through to his marrow,
And reminded him of something pleasant and light…
And the wolf narrowed his eyes and rolled himself up
In a round, with his head upon his hindquarters
And nestled down into his own pelt, smiling to himself.
And the wood thickened, drew close together,
And only the tips of the trees waved above,
And blacker yet were the depths below.
And suddenly the wolf sprang up,
Eyes turned to the West
For the western wind had brought to his nose
The same scents he had smelled on the first night,
And which had only made him dizzy with their confusion
For the storm had mixed all the winds.
And the wolf’s nostrils quivered from the sharpness,
And a joy stirred his whiskers
And his teeth gnashed and ground
Against one another in his mouth —
The stillness was caught up and, ring in ring,
Spun apart, from one edge of the wood to the other
Until all the limbs of the trees burst
And were carried apart in the swirling
Of the wolf’s triumphant cry…
And the leaves and the roots and the paths of the forest
Tore and seethed beneath the claws
Of the wolf’s pursuing step…
This is a wonderful translation--I am enjoying it so much!