A piano master’s love for Yiddish, and the poems he read recently at Carnegie Hall

The New York Times recently covered the Yiddishophilia — in recitation and in his own poetic creations — of the contemporary master pianist Evgeny Kissin. The poems he recited, and their translations (by me, among others), are available here. Here is one of them.

A teatr iz di velt (The World’s a Theater)

Translated by Zackary Sholem Berger

The world’s a theater.

God’s director.

A fine play. A pity, though:

The prompter is the Devil.

The booth is the black heart.

The Devil forges the play!

And if you recite the wrong thing

You can’t take it back!

Of course, you can’t be careful enough.

And can’t make a fuss.

The play is fantastic.

The mistakes – genius!

The actor stumbles too.

When he’s supposed

to hurl the cup away,

he brings it to his mouth!

The wine drops glow like flames.

He empties the glass.

There’s no hurrying the thunder.

God’s patience is great.