When he breaks his vow of solitude
 – a poor wedding gift like his daily bread –
the poet lets himself be won over by the city
and by the seven streets of their seven joys.
In front of his door the rural caravan
of Lacroze streetcars passes like a sweet wind
– green gust that unifies the peoples of Israel
Into a bundle of blond souls and rapid dreams –
He climbs aboard and crosses odd numbered avenues
as old as Aion and like Aion modern
and at the noisy curve of Pasteur Street and Corrientes
he enters the bar of bars.
‘Bar Internacional!’
where the Jewish clan   
innocuously recovers
from the persecutions of Imperial Russia!

One of those Cossacks
– the executioners
who fan the storm – stoops
(from two meters to one-fifty)
in the doorway for two pesos
and folds himself into a ninety-degree angle
with the elasticity of a contortionist
before the good-humored Jews
who can relax at a sight without threat
and forget the crack of knouts
and the servility of hooligans
facing the stage where seven or eight scoundrels
dance and sing and make balalaikas moan.

Surely, they are not Essenes
These insatiable sybarites
who speak in the nasal voice of our forebears
(who say we are, of course, so-called Jews)
while they may add biscotti, sweets, crumpets
to ...