Friday, September 9, 2022

NELLY SACHS ~



                                                        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