Yalla
Betar.
Yalla.
T'was the dreaded day,
The hours of evil infamy:
Brother unto brother,
The cruel clash of kinsmen.
O'er hallowed ground
Of Mother Jerusalem
Lay its writhing sons:
O Death! O God,
O God. Ohana.
Yalla Betar, yalla.
Yalla, yalla, yalla.
This savage civil conflict
This war twixt pleasant neighbors:
The army of Hapoel
And the soldiers of Betar.
One must win, one must die.
One must die.
Here, noblemen of yellow
There, gents with banners red
Singing paeans of devotion.
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Yalla, go to hell.
These ears of cloth deceive me:
Did I hear what I did hear?
A traitor to the cause!
These eyes of pewter shock me
For instead of retribution
There are murmurs of assent:
"Yalla Betar, to hell.
To hell, ye languid puffs!
To hell eternally."
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Whoresons of vermin!
Prithee, I beseeched
One citizen of vivid voice:
Your flag is sunny xanthic
Yet your ire rages red.
Askance he looked at me
And spat in my direction;
Avast, he cried, you chalky fool,
Have you no sense at all?
To hate 'em is to love 'em.
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Lesbian maladroits!
Their heroes on the verdant lea,
Their warriors of sport
Sustained a valiant game,
Doubtlessly emboldened
By their rooters' fulsome praise:
Drunken son of virgin pig,
Worthless panjandrum,
Faggot, flunkie, flaccid fish,
Shlemiel, shlemazel, shmuck.
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Detestable professors!
A kindly soul assuaged me
My vexed perplexities.
"I see, m'lord, my crowd is not
Your proper cup of tea.
Permit me, sire, to explicate
The oddness of our ways."
"Forsooth," waxt I,
"My gracious friend,
I covet your concern."
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Ye Ashkenaz impostors!
"You see," quoth he,
"For what we spend
To sit here in attendance:
T'is a right, a privilege,
To exercise opinion.
A democratic liberty,
A hard-wrought right to speak,
To chant a lusty cheer, perhaps,
Or manifest displeasure."
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Yalla, flatfoot farts!
"Ay," says I, "but surely not
Such venal deprecations?"
- Suddenly, a roar arose.
He suavely begged my pardon
To join the public wrath.
My half-drunk beer he took in hand
And flung it to the field.
What was, to me, half-full, to him
Was smashed to smithereens.
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Ingest fecal emanations!
My education carried on:
I had a lot to learn.
"Yonder," said my gentle friend
"That yellow number eight:
Emasculated wet-nurse, he;
A pus-infested wart.
And over there, number two,
In case you haven't heard,
A cockroach in a jar."
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Ya manyak, vuzvuz, drek!
"Galumpher, la-di-da, a pimp,
That clumsy number six;
And four and ten are
Tweedledee and
Brother Tweedledum.
Eleven lacks a scrotum,
And that knock-kneed number nine:
You know why he falls down so much?
He eats gefilte fish."
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
Stinkin' Arab-lovers!
"Thanks," I said, he doffed his hat
And wooing Lady Luck
He punched a red-shirt rooter.
Great Zeus, it turned the trick!
An artful dodge, a lashing volley...
The jaundiced faithful surged --
"Zounds, a goal! There is a God!"
The sops and fops and simps and wimps
Now herculean heroes.
Yalla, Betar, yalla,
We kiss your dusty feet!
Alas, the devil's side hit back,
Alack, yon redmen scored.
Contumelies rained down again,
And venerations too acute
For such an august journal.
And somewhere men are laughing,
And somewhere children grin,
But there's no joy in Malcha:
Mighty Betar didn't win.
