Title of a poem by the Yiddish poet Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886–1932) from his first poetry collection In Nyu York (1919; “In New York,” 1982). Memento Mori is an example of the poet’s ability to cast a very personal pronouncement in lively Yiddish everyday language. In the context of modern lyric poetry, the poem illustrates Halpern’s unmistakable synthesis of modern individualism with the dynamic of Yiddish as the language of the “simple folk.”