Churchbells

Listen to the poem in English

Churchbells — Read by Greg Nedved

Samuel Hoffenstein— Original Text

When I was a little lad,
Sunday churchbells made me sad,
Made me wish I hadn’t been
Born a Jew and deep in sin,
For as many a Christian boy
Told me with unChristly joy
I had personally done
A thing to blacken sky and sun,
In hate and malice sacrificed
His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
And though, since I was barely ten,
I couldn’t quite remember when
I had done the hellish thing,
I used to hear the churchbells ring,
And dogs of terror scampered blind

Through Ghetto alleys of my mind,

And barked in bells from Christian spires,
And ran in rings ’round Christian fires,
And crucifixes, wild of eye,
On their single legs strode by.
I watched the people, still and strange,
Passing in their Sunday change,
Knife-lipped women, rock-faced men,
Seemingly the same as when
I saw them every other day,
Yet skies and seas and lands away,
And felt forlorn and child-alone,
And felt that way among my own –
No Gentile dark with love of Christ
Whom I and mine had sacrificed,
No Jew with skullcap on his head
Mumbling something Moses said –
A leaf that fluttered from no tree,
Nor came to rest, nor yet was free,
A tree that walked, but never grew,
A living semblance, but a Jew
Lost in the United States,
Lost behind the Ghetto gates,
No bird, yet wingless, lost in air,
Along and alien everywhere.
Now I am a large and mellow,
Mild and philosophic fellow
Of amiable thought and speech,
Sweetly disposed toward all and each,
A stanch disciple of Saint Paul,
A friend of sparrows as they fall,
Contained, reflective and resigned,
Of equable Franciscan mind,
Content with almost anything,
I hear the Sunday churchbells ring
Upon a morning broad and bright,
And think the little lad was right
And will be till the gods unite
And One God says, “Let there be light!”

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