Abraham Sutzkever Poems

Who is the woman fluttering toward me,
At her breast a baby with no name?
She hovers through to the Viliya shore
And at her breast the child — a flickering flame.
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At thirty, my father's heart burst
While playing
Rebbe Levi Yitzhok's melody on a violin at night.
The fiddle trembled on his shoulder like a child
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Shall I start from the beginning?
Shall I, a brother,
Like Abraham
Smash all the idols?
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'Here is where Moses carried the bones
Of Joseph — to home's blue ridge.'
My heart weeps: my generation did not
Fulfill a will, restore a bridge.
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And you don't see the rain, and you don't feel a drop,
Flaming madness straying in sand;
And streams like warhorses wildly gallop —
From the rocks, into bony wadi' s band!
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Stubborn, the sunset insisted on staying
In the Red Sea at night, when they first
Come to the palace of water — the innocent-pink,
Noble deer, to still their thirst.
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Dark. The last, the primeval last line,
Crystal-unique, quivers on high.
It glitters three times in the air
And teaches me, flickering deep in my eye:
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A long arm of fire
Burst the gates of the ghetto.

A blind beggar, the day
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Infant sun, forever born anew,
Rolls in snow with me, with light enriched.
Papa says: 'Come on, the sky is blue,
Let's go fetch some wood.' And so we hitched
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Oh, love your dog, your bed, your platter,
But do not love the gray time.
A faithful dog will not so flatter
As gray time will flatter you.
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