Abraham Sutzkever Poems

Did you ever see in fields of snow
Frozen Jews, in row upon row?

Breathless they lie, marbled and blue.
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The wheels they drag and drag on,
What do they bring, and whose?
They bring along a wagon
Filled with throbbing shoes.
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All the noises, all the sounds, asleep.
Under seven streams sleeps fear.
And the elephant, so deep in sleep,
That you can sneak up, cut off his ear.
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Signs of paws — an animal has sown
Like blue roses in the white snow's gleam,
When the sun, new risen and unknown,
Like a baby, casts its piercing scream —
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Caves, gape open,
Split open under my ax!
Before the bullet hits me —
I bring you gifts in sacks.
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How long is the road from myself to myself?
Sometimes half a moment,
That's all. Here is wholeness. But a serpent
On the path between the two gates.
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Only smoke, smoke, hovering smoke,
Dead children — puffs of living smoke.

They call: Mama, mama! from the smoke,
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The sculptor says: once upon a time, I had an atelier
In the ear of a needle. But it was roomier
To blow out of the clay faces and muscles
Than here in the old palace — a gift from the king.
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Gather me in from all the ends of time, from wood and stone,
Embrace me like letters of a burning prayerbook.
Gather me together — so I can be alone,
Alone with you, and you — in all my limbs.
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Digging a pit as one must, as they say.
I seek in the earth a solace today.

A thrust and a cut — and a worm gives a start:
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