From “Flight and Metamorphosis”
By Nelly Sachs
Translated by Joshua Weiner
Who dies
here last
will carry the grain of sun
between his lips
will thundercrack the night
in death-throe rot.
Blood-
sparked dreams
will shoot from his shoulders
in a jagged flash
branding empyreal skin
with the mystery of affliction.
Because Noah’s ark went down
star-figured avenues
whoever
dies here last
will have shoes
filled with water
where a fish
with homesick backsail
draws black dissolving time
into its tomb.
__
This is the dark breath
of Sodom
and the burden
of Nineveh
cast off
at the open wound
of our door.
This the sacred writing
in flight from the land
all its letters climbing
skyward
feathered blessedness
finding refuge in a honeycomb.
This the black Laocoön
cast on our eyelid
perforating millennia
uprooted grieftree
sprouting in our pupil.
These are salt-stiffened fingers
teardropping in prayer.
This His ocean’s tow
dragged back
into the rushing shell of secrets.
This our ebb
star of agony
from our moldering sand—
__
The Hunter
my constellation
takes aim
at a secret bloodpoint: Unrest ...
and the footstep flees without asylum—
But the wind is no house
just licks the body’s wounds
like an animal—
Yet how should we pull time
from the sun’s golden threads?
Coil
night
for the silk butterfly’s cocoon?
O Darkness
spread your legation wide
for the blink of an eye:
rest on the flight.
__
So far out, in the open,
cushioned in sleep.
In flight from the land
with love’s heavy luggage.
A butterfly-zone of dreams
like an open parasol
held up against the truth.
Night
night
nightdress body
stretching its emptiness
while space expands
from dust without song.
Sea
with prophetic tongues of spray
rolls
over the death shroud
till sun again sows
each second’s blaze of pain.
__
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—
__
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.
__
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.
__
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.
__
Those driven
from home
wind-whipped
with the death-vein behind the ear
slaughtering the sun—
Cast off from lost customs
following the watercourse
and the weeping rails of death
they still hold
in the cave
of the mouth
a word hidden
for fear of thieves
they say: rosemary
and chew a root
pulled from the field
or
taste night after night: departure
they say:
It’s time
as a new wound opened
on the foot.
Their body will be devoured
by the salt of torment.
Skinless
eyeless
did Job form God.
__
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.
__
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.
__
O that one understands so little
as long as the eyes know only evening.
Windows and doors open as if knocked off track
before you ready for departure.
Unrest inflames
hiding places for night moths
beginning to pray for home.
Until at length your heart
dreadful hooked wound
was torn into healing,
heaven and earth
as cinders kissing in your gaze—
O Soul—forgive
my wanting to lead you back
to so many hearths of rest
Rest
Notes:
Excerpted from Flight and Metamorphosis (Flucht und Verwandlung) by Nelly Sachs, translated by Joshua Weiner, to be published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Translation copyright © 2020 by Joshua Weiner. All rights reserved.
Source:
Poetry
(April 2020)
