In a booth with shining oranges
shines one orange who’s alive.
“Cara mia,
I’m the gloomiest of Adam’s sons,
but in the oranges and in you
lies so much sunlight that I lose
a little darkness just by looking.
All my darkness you could consume!”

When I pay you, such a gesture!
As if you gave the sea
as change.                                                                           
And in what pocket
can a mortal
fit the sea?

By the light of your suns and oranges
may at last become clear the sense of it all.
Who knows?  Perhaps the revelation
can be found here on Brindisi,
between the oranges and the sea!
Maybe the truth is just as simple
as a bird’s play around me in the blue.

But off with you – accept you must return now to the ship.
I’m only a passenger
ashore for a stroll.
For a brief time
they let the gangplank down,
but the ship awaits,
and soon the plank
must go up
once again.

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(Editor's Note: In 1921 Zeitlin and his younger brother made a tourist visit to Palestine. The abundance of oranges, in Brindisi along the way, is sure to have impressed them: in Poland then, and much later, an orange was a luxury, imported from Palestine or Spain, and often sold individually wrapped.)