Nelly Sachs, 1938
HOW MANY HOMELANDS
play cards in the air
as the refugee passes through the mystery
How much sleeping music
in the wooded thicket
where the wind, all alone,
plays the midwife.
Lightning-split
the alphabet-spurgewood
sows
in devouring conception
God's first word.
Fate twitches
in the bloodcoursing meridians of a hand —
Everything is endless
and hung on the rays
of a distance.
_________________
Nelly Sachs
Flight and Metamorphosis
translated by Joshua Weiner
Farrar, 2022
