A beautiful translation of a Gordon poem; a guest post

I would like to post this wonderful free translation of the first part of Yehuda Leib Gordon's 1875 poem Kotzo Shel Yud. This was originally posted by my talented friend הערשי at Kave Shtiebel, and he gave me permission to post it here:

Jewish wife, who shall know your life?

It comes in the dark, and leaves no mark

Your joys and your anguishes, your hopes and your wishes

In your heart born, and in your heart worn

The world and all the pleasure

For others to treasure

The life of the Jewess a perpetual grind

Forever in her house confined

Bear, deliver, rear, and litter

Bake, and make, and wither

So what if you’re blessed, beauty you possessed

A heart refined, a keen mind

Study is bane, beauty vain

Talent a defect, knowledge abject

Your voice is crude, your hair lewd

You are naught, a goatskin filled with blood and rot

The Serpent’s pest, in you rests

Like the infected, by your own kin rejected

From scholarship, and from the house of worship

In the houses of merriment, you but lament

Good you don't master, the tongue of you ancestor

Thus you are barred, from the Lord’s yard

And you don't hear, the blessing the jeer

“Lord we bless, for not creating us a lass”

Like the heathen and the slave you are rated

Like a hen to breed fated

A heifer threshes, milk gives the cow

What use is it with knowledge to endow?

Why waste time you to rear

Those who follow your counsel in hell will sear

Not only has God closed your womb

Took your husband in your bloom

The cream of your days you while through

But you await your husband’s brother to pull his shoe

On your fathers bed you most grieved

From his inheritance nothing received

They deprive you not only the material

But keep from you the ministerial

For themselves commandments two forty eight

Only three for poor you, said the cheapskate

You are miserable so, Jewess!

You crave to know, to live, but alas

God’s sprout, wilting in drought

Not by sun rays dry, but away from the eye

Fertile soil, bearing luscious fruit with toil

For want of plow, grows weed now

Ere you matured into a conscious soul

You were thrust into a motherly role

Before they taught her, to be a daughter

She married, and her own children carried

Wed him, have you even met him?

Love him, aye; have you cast an eye?

You’re loved, what? Wretched, you know not

Love is apart, from the Jewish heart?

Forty days before, her mother bore

Her match-maker, destined her taker

What good will it do, to take a view

What will it add, to see the lad?

What’s love? Our mothers knew not

We shall not put off, our sister a slut

Head furled, face shrouded in veil

Hair curled, to the razor avail

Why have you eyed, who stands by your side

Whether crippled or bald, whether young or old

It’s all to the same use, you don’t get to choose

Your father will accord, he is your lord

Like chattel sold, from hold to hold

Are they like Aramites to inquire, after the girl’s desire?

As a maiden, your father is your warden

Your husband you please, under his auspices.

Your husband knows no art, he is not skilled

Never planted a vineyard, nor a house built

When the dowry is drawn

The family spawn

He sets looking for a trade

Dejected and dismayed

With options few, he has no clue

He runs away in the night, and leaves you chained in plight.

This is the story, of the Jewess’ glory.