On The Road To The Wailing Wall Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

On the road to the Wailing Wall,
In a leaning well of clay,
A Jew, hairy as an owl,
Sits and etches a chalice.
The melodies
Of his mute lips question
The cloud
Watching over the roofs:
When will He come walking toward us?
And he etches the answer on the chalice.

Thus he may have sat
On the road to the Wailing Wall
In biblical days and nights,
When the Prophet
Jeremiah with the yoke around his neck
Hammered of himself a monument.
Thus he may have sat
When no mother's son was left after the battle.

Today, in nineteen hundred and forty eight,
At the downfall of states,
He still sits there, the goldsmith, in the same garments,
In the same leaning well,
Against the same cloud over the roofs
And etches the answer on the chalice.

Like juicy rubies of a pomegranate,
Shot through with summer lightning,
Shines his face.
— Will you, grandpa, ever find the secret?
— I have patience, I etch.

Extinguished. No more face.
Cold, blue soot.
Just the hands —
Bony omens of redemption,
Not burned out, etch the chalice.

Extinguished too the fingers, the nails.
Bleeding in the air, the chalice's band.
With a prayer he makes a pilgrimage
To the moon rising in the land.

Jerusalem, January 1948