Yiddish

Long before the fall of the House of Habsburg,

there were certain reports from all parts

of the Empire, from Dubrovnik

to Linz, from Bratislava to Trieste,

that became so frequent, were so consistent

the Emperor had to be informed.

The usual stories of naked, dancing

alchemists in Sarajevo or Yiddish

speaking brown bears playing klezmer in Prague

could be ignored, but he needed to know

that so many of his subjects were claiming

to be musical instruments made of glass –

grand pianos, even whole wind sections.

Chancellor Von Taaffe reported to him

in the privacy of the map-lined study

at the Hofburg. Franz Josef nodded, sighed,

and was silent. Eventually he spoke.

“Shall the concert be in Salzburg – or here

in Vienna?”‘, and smiled so that Von Taaffe

would know it had been a witz. The Chancellor

smiled too, bowed, then asked for instructions.

“Meisterliche Inaktivität!”

 

After the massacre in St Petersburg,

so close to Nicholas’ Winter Palace,

and the failed revolution that followed,

Franz Josef had a recurring nightmare.

It always opened with the frontier post

at the edge of the Hungarian steppe,

and always on the Jewish Sabbath.

Approaching on the white road from the east

would be a bear and its keeper – the latter

naked and dancing, the former calling out

to the guard: ‘”Shalom! Gutes shabbes! Ikh bin

a glaz okarina”.