A Pack Of Music Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

I

Over a pile of steaming horse dung,
I warm my icy hands.
I warm my hands and regret:
Not enough have I known, have I listened
To the greatness of smallness.
Sometimes,
The warm breath of a pile of dung
May become a poem, a thing of beauty.

II

With such moments
In a forest of snow
You have to wrestle
Worse than a dying man
Fighting his microbes.
If you win —
They will become your own,
Revealing
The meaning of struggle,
The birth of fates
Locked up in snow.
But if you lose the furious fencing —
Your own breath
Will freeze you to death.

III

Alone. Pure, frozen calm.
Under the stillness —
My naked body.
Just two yards of ground are mine —
Here I lie, covered by the moon.

I sharpen my ears
For a voice of a friend,
A voice of a friend!
But like my own echo coming back from afar —
Music of wolves
In a shimmering semicircle.

Is this the only faithful thing
I have left:
Music of wolves —
The last faithful thing
Frozen howls over forest snow?
Let it be!
Relentless as steel,
It closes in on me,
A pack of music!

Come close, my wolves,
My dearest wolves!
Let us be friends, let us prowl together
On hostile man, on the devilish whirl.
Pack of music —
Conquer the world!

Vilna, Zakret Forest, December 1941