[AZ Foreman]

Oh this is useful! I'm just popping back in now. Had a long day: will think on this some more and revise tomorrow.

I definitely agee that there's a register-clash in this use of "for good" here.

[AZ Foreman]

Thank you so much, Robert, Andrew and Carl. Alright I've made some adjustments and edits to the tetrameter version here. Carl I think is right about "for good". Andrew was maybe right about translating the first line of S2 more literally, and definitely about the value of not having a run-on between S3-4.

With "not such as I do flee" I was trying to account for the ambiguity of the Hebrew line which can be read as "A man like me does not run away" OR "No man runs away like I do". But I suppose all I did was make it opaque.

I decided that maybe I could account for the "covenant" with the phrase "cut a pact". That is literally what the Hebrew phrase means. In Biblical Hebrew one literally "cuts" a covenant, and I think the idiom can work in English if only just. There's also "cut a deal" which means much the same thing but that feels like the wrong register.

I do want to keep the tetrameter. I tried a pentameter version, but found that a lot of lines just needed so much padding for that to work. It occurred to me to try something in irregular pentameters. It wound up musically different from Bialik. Here's one such version FWIW.

"Go, flee"? None such as I do flee.
My flock taught me slow walking with their tracks.
My tongue did not learn fluency.
My word falls like a heavy ax.

And if my strength was spent in vain, the blunder
Is yours. So on your heads the crime.
My hammer found no anvil under.
My axe struck rotten lime.

No matter. I'll accept my fate and go,
Tools girt about me as before,
A wage-hire cheated of his wage. As slow
As I arrived, I'll leave once more.

I'll go home to my valley and there form
A covenant with sycamores today.
But you are putrid rot. Tomorrow's storm
Will blow you all away.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I really like the new draft. It's a good poem in its own right. Yes, "cut a pact" is a stretch, but for me at least, it's an acceptable one because of the similarity to "cut a deal," which was in the back of my mind when I came across your phrase.

[Julie Steiner]

I like "cut / a pact" too. Very nice draft. I like the simplicity and axe-like deliberation of phrases like "a worker cheated of his pay" and "But you are canker. You are rot." S1's context seems to demand a voice that eschews fancy phrasing, enjambments, etc.

Perhaps "My school was livestock, walking slow."

[Carl Copeland]

I also like the new draft and “cut a pact.” It passes as an idiom even if it isn’t. It first sounded too informal, but then it got me thinking the N may cut down some sycamores and they’ll be hard under his axe in contrast to the rotten trees he’s leaving behind. I like that.

I’d still suggest “My flock has taught me to walk slow” to prevent the many proponents of natural reading from getting a trimeter: “For my FLOCK │ TAUGHT me │ to walk SLOW.” The new S2L1 can also be read naturally as a trimeter: “Was my STRENGTH │ spent in VAIN? │ The BLUNder.” That could be made more “relentlessly iambic” with something like “Was all my strength in vain?” It’s an interesting question, though, to what extent readers can be relied on to shift back and forth between natural and meter-driven readings.