A Cry from Russia

BROTHERS, my brothers—you that are free

In the golden lands, beyond the sea,

Are you blind that you do not heed the scars

Of my futile hands as they beat the bars?

Are you deaf that you do not heed the cry

Of the Little People who will not die?

Who will not die though with fear

Without their Ghetto walls. Ah, hear

The anguished cry of the mother of sons

Who are spat on thus by the lordly ones:

“Ye may not labor. Ye have no goal.

Back to your hovels! Herd as the swine!

Be eaten with fear to your very soul!”

This is the birth of the coward’s whine.

Brothers, my brothers, the days are long

For the wretched one who does no wrong,

But to live through beggary, misery—aye

Worse than these—a Jew till he die.

For he sucked, with the milk at his mother’s breast,

Patient for scorn and patient for jest,

Wounds of the body and wounds of the soul

Till a day when the Lord God made him whole

The shining day he will bless the pain

That has brought the Jew to his own again.

He will bless the pain. But brothers mine

Easy for you not to herd as swine;

Prosperous, florishing—kith and kin,

Easy for you to stay clean within.

But, O my Brothers beyond the sea,

The days are long and bitter for me.