The Woman Of Marble In Père Lachaise Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

The woman of marble
In Père Lachaise
Ensnared me.
I walked in Père Lachaise
With a fresh bunch
Of jasmine
For Chopin's remains
Transformed into sounds.

Just the fact
That letters on the stone
Spelled out where
The master was born —
Touched me to the quick.
According to the place
He is almost my brother.
And according to time? —
But what is a century
Compared to our own minutes?
I swear I'm hardly jealous about the present!
I pressed my ear to the stone
And heard: a piano raining.

But then my puzzled ear
Sensed a warm throbbing,
A gesture.
I raise my head —
A woman-gravestone bends down to me.
The woman-gravestone came to life,
Opened lips of moldy green.
She runs her fingers through my pompadour
And speaks her stone tongue to my face:

'The heart of the one I guard
Left long ago for his homeland.
And only his dust blooms
In this red, dead tombland.

But you, if you wish, Monsieur,
Like my lord Chopin, long ago,
To enjoy — could you say where your heart
Should be brought — do you know?'

The sun shriveled
In my branch of jasmine.
I was left in Pere Lachaise
Numb, no words:
Was it worth collecting
Thirty years,
Losing all my loved ones,
Hanging by a thread,
Emerging from the oven
With unbumed tears,
That I should now,
At Pere Lachaise,
Hear
That my almighty heart
Is worth a farthing.
And if I write a will that says
My heart should be brought home —
The entire, sad, eternal world-peopleWill laugh.

Paris, 1947