Today I helped Rachael with a paper for a UCLA literature course and I read some poetry by Abraham Sutzkever, who is considered by many to be “the greatest poet of the Holocaust.” The poem that we read and analyzed is called “How?”
It reads:
How?
How will you fill your goblet On the day of liberation? And with what? Are you prepared, in your joy, to endure The dark keeing you have heard Where skulls of days glitter In a bottomless pit?
You will search for a key to fit You jammed locks. You will bite The sidewalks like bread, Thinking: It used to be better. And time will gnaw at you like a cricket Caught in a fist.
Then your memory will resemble And ancient buried town And your estranged eyes will burrow down Like a mole, a mole….
Vilna Ghetto, February 14, 1943 Translated by Chana Bloch
This is such a richly evocative poem, which says so much in so few words. The most striking line for me: “Like a cricket caught in a fist.” What a succinct and perfect way to describe a feeling of total powerlessness.
Many believe Abraham Sutzkever deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. After reading several of his poems today, I concur.
Sutzkever died at 96 in 2010.
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