You Were Looking for Tidy Children’s Bedrooms
The sirens howl for two minutes
pensive silence in your eyes
limbs and birds immobile
like in freezing winter
although we are in April
One minute for six millions
stars in heaven
one minute for five millions
moving in orbit around them
two minutes to think up
a eulogy for the dead
a eulogy for the living
In the Warsaw Ghetto you were twelve
your mother was already in the sky
the most luminous star
you had to help the men look for coal
in empty dwellings
and because you loved
collecting books & stamps
you were looking
for tidy children’s bedrooms
In Bergen-Belsen you were thirteen
you wrote poems
on the bunk beds’ wooden slats
before neatly copying them down
in a tiny notebook
and reciting them
on Jewish holidays
proudly standing on a small table
Sixty-eight years later
wrapped up in foil
the notebook shines
in your Jerusalem bedroom
Mauve sage flowers grace your garden
saving us from ourselves
when the leaves burn
sacred smoke cleanses the air
clouds travel to the children’s bedrooms
to bring them back
(poem written on Holocaust Remembrance Day)
(Sabine Huynh, published in the poetry magazine Poetry Super Highway)
———
Translating The Untranslatable
I translate the untranslatable
–poetry
I try to transmit the incommunicable
the concentration camp universe
how can this be
how could it be
anashim rabim rabim kol kach*
why are they no longer with us
ashen poppies
bloodstained stars
my heart stumbles over each word
cries and moans in silence
my hand is paralyzed
before the irreparable
loss that tears my retinas
one by one my limbs
petrify before the vision
this dead-alive past
haunts the present
my eyes hear Polish words
attacking my lucidity
the horrible ogromna ludzi kupa **
setting off aphasia
then driving speech
poetry is lost forever
I have no right to betray
the quivering meaning
but this world nearby eludes me
how can I think the unthinkable
how to name the unnamable
in translation
when even fiction has been
drained by testimony
his voice lies there expiring
on the page
numbing half my face
my wasted voice cannot utter
may there be a language left
for speech and translation
for blood budding like poppies
for ash glinting into stars
a language to carry on the battle.
Notes:
* Hebrew for « so many many people so many »
** Polish for « the stack of persons is enormous »
(Sabine Huynh, published in the poetry magazine Traduzionetradizione)