"on a scale of joy I weigh them"

Hey, what do you deal in – sorrow?

What are you selling there – despair?

I’m a buyer and a dealer,

and I’m dealing and I’m wheeling

days and nights, and even moments:

on a scale of joy I weigh them,

buy them up and then resell them,

half are black

and half in blazes,

at fairs, in markets, and on highways

who should happen in my pathway,

in whoever’s path I happen

I count Mammon!…

I’m a buyer and a dealer

and I’m dealing and I’m wheeling…

What are you selling – corpses? Rags?

Or long-since-departed dads?

Hey, a buyer’s slipped a way,

he’s dying but will be reborn.

~ Peretz Markish, 1917

translated by Amelia Glaser

Markish was one of thirteen members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee who were secretly executed on Stalin's orders, August 12, 1952, an event known as The Night of the Murdered Poets. You can read about it here, and you can see a document with more of the work of Markish and others here.  

The Poet, Egon Schiele, 1911