Abraham Sutzkever (July 15, 1913 – January 20, 2010) was an acclaimed Yiddish poet. The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was “the greatest poet of the Holocaust.”
A HEAVY APPLE
Abraham Sutzkever
A heavy apple draws a full branch down with summer,
so it will know where to fall, an open hand grows up from the ground.
Like so, my soul, you bow ever lower, dumber,
loaded heavy with juice and time and fermenting beams of light.
You are also a fruit on a branch, in the garden of your keeper,
invisible as he who created you with ability to see.
And somewhere a child cries in its cradle and weeps bittersweetly…
Why, then, such a soul can be commanded by no other!
The heavy apple plays around with its shadow another moment longer,
like Don Quixote, a cloud rides by with a lance,
when the feet of the rain have trodden an entire night
the roots race, at a gallop, to be nourished beneath the grass.
And if you will tear yourself loose from the branch, back into mist,
loaded heavy with juice and time and fermenting beams of light,
recall how summer is drawn down by a heavy apple
that in falling is inherited by an open hand of the soil.
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from Epitaphs
Abraham Sutzkever
Written on a slat of a railway car:
If some time someone should find pearls
threaded on a blood-red string of silk
which, near the throat, runs all the thinner
like life’s own path until it’s gone
somewhere in a fog and can’t be seen—
If someone should find these pearls
let him know how—cool, aloof—they lit up
the eighteen-year-old, impatient heart
of the Paris dancing girl, Marie.
Now, dragged through unknown Poland—
I’m throwing my pearls through the grate.
If they’re found by a young man—
let these pearls adorn his girlfriend.
If they’re found by a girl—
let her wear them; they belong to her.
And if they’re found by an old man—
let him, for these pearls, recite a prayer.
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WHO WILL REMAIN, WHAT WILL REMAIN?
Abraham Sutzkever
Who will remain, what will remain? A wind will remain behind,
there will remain the blindness of the disappearing blind.
There will remain a string of foam: a sign of the sea,
there will remain a puff of cloud hooked upon a tree.
Who will remain, what will remain? A syllable will remain behind,
primeval, to cultivate its creation again in time.
There will remain a fiddlerose in honor of itself alone,
to be understood by seven blades of all grass that grows.
More than all the stars there are from north to here,
there will remain the star that falls in a true tear.
A drop of wine will always remain in a pitcher too.
Who will remain? God will remain, isn’t that enough for you?