Banasta Solament

In flight

what great welcome

along the way—

Shrouded

in the winds’ shawl

feet in the sand’s prayer

which can never say Amen

because it must move

from fin to wing

and further—

The sick butterfly

soon again knows the sea—

This stone

with the fly’s inscription

has dropped into my hand—

In place of home

I hold the metamorphoses of the world—

In der Flucht

But maybe

in a smokecloud of error

we have

created a wandering cosmos

with the language of our breath—

Have we

time and again

sounded the fanfare

of the beginning

shaped the grain of sand

quick as wind

before, once more, there was light

above the bud of the embryo?

And again

we are encircled

in your districts, and again

though we don’t recall the night

nor the depths of the sea

with our teeth we bite off

the star-veins of words.

And still we work your field

behind death’s back.

Maybe the detours of man’s fall

are like the secret desertions of meteors

marked in the alphabet of storms

alongside rainbows—

And who knows

the course of becoming fertile

how seeds bend up

out of depleted soil

for the suckling mouths

of light.

Aber vielleicht

If someone comes

from afar

with a language

that maybe seals off

its sounds

with a mare’s whinny

or

the chirping

of young blackbirds

or

like a gnashing saw that chews up

everything in reach—

If someone comes

from afar

moving like a dog

or

maybe a rat

and it’s winter

dress him warmly

for who knows

his feet may be on fire

(perhaps he rode in

on a meteor)

so don’t scold him

if your rug, riddled with holes,

screams—

A stranger always has

his homeland in his arms

like an orphan

for whom he may be seeking nothing

but a grave.

Kommt einer

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.

Wie viele Heimatländer

Dancer

like a bride

from blind space

you receive

the budding desire

of creation’s distant days—

With your body’s musical avenues

you graze on the air

there

where the earth

seeks new entry

to birth.

Through

night-lava

like eyelids

softly opening

the first cry

of creation’s volcano

flickers.

In the branches of your limbs

the premonitions build

their twittering nests.

Like a milkmaid

in twilight

your fingertips tug

the secret sources

of light

till you—pierced by the

trial of evening—

deliver your eyes

to the moon, for the nightwatch.

Dancer

twisting in labor

then spent

you alone

bear on your body’s hidden cord

the God-given twinned jewels

of death and birth.

Tänzerin

Child

child

in the whirlwind of departure

pushing your toes’ white flaming foam

against the burning ring of the horizon

seeking death’s secret way out.

Already voiceless—exhaling smoke—

Lying as the sea lies

with just depth below

tearing at the mooring

with waves of longing.

Child

child

your head buried now

the seedpod of your dreams

grown heavy

in final surrender

ready to sow other land.

With eyes

turned back toward the motherground—

You, cradled in the century’s rut

where time with ruffled wings

drowns, stunned

in the great flood

of your end

without end.

Kind

Nelly Sachs — Flucht und Verwandlung [Flight and Metamorphosis] 1959

 Translated from the German by Joshua Weiner & Linda B. Parshall (2022)