Abraham Sutzkever

Who will stay behind, and what? A wind. Blindness from the blind man disappearing. A token of the sea: a strand of foam. A cloud stuck in a tree. Who will stay behind, and what? A single sound as genesis regrasses its creation. Like the violin rose that honors just itself. Seven grasses of that grass do understand. More than all the stars hence and northward, that star will stay that sinks into a tear. Forever in its jug, a drop of  wine remains. What will be left here? God. Not enough for you? Translated from the Yiddish

What potion should I give the night so she’ll always wonder? Her pounding heart’s a rider galloping from the burning wood. Maybe my pharmacist is awake the next street over? In a crucible of  bone, snake tears mixed with herbs. Should I hurry? Call the doctor? A heart like hers is rare. And to tell the truth, if it shattered, what would I do? Translated from the Yiddish

Written on a slat of a railway car: If some time someone should find pearls threaded on a blood-red string of silk which, near the throat, runs all the thinner like life’s own path until it’s gone somewhere in a fog and can’t be seen— If someone should find these pearls let him know how—cool, aloof—they lit up the eighteen-year-old, impatient heart of the Paris dancing girl, Marie. Now, dragged through unknown Poland— I’m throwing my pearls through the grate. If they’re found by a young man— let these pearls adorn his girlfriend. If they’re found by a girl— let her wear them; they belong to her. And if they’re found by an old man— let him, for these pearls, recite a prayer.

I kept a letter from my hometown in Lithuania, from one who still holds a dominion somewhere with her youthful charm. In it she placed her sorrow and her affection: A blade of grass from Ponar. This blade of grass with a flickering puff of dying cloud ignited, letter by letter, the faces of the letters. And over letter-faces in murmuring smolder: The blade of grass from Ponar. This blade of grass is now my world, my miniature home, where children play the fiddle in a line on fire. They play the fiddle and legendary is their conductor: The blade of grass from Ponar. I will not separate from my hometown’s blade of grass. My good, longed-for earth will make room for both. And then I will bring a gift to the Lord: The blade of grass from Ponar. Translated from the Yiddish