Abraham Sutzkever

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.

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

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?

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