In all the white fields and forests
Old sorrows called out to the new.
At the gate two wooden poles,
Out of which nothing could be carved,
Not a spoon, a moon, nor a Gypsy sky,
Not a swift or an owl or another flight.
We went through them single file,
Our faces turned to the sky.
Who could tell the time from the stars
If the roof was an inch from their eyes?
A child's black fingers descended upon a moth
That descended upon a candleflame.
The winter was closing in
Cold and fast and blue.
We dreamed of a better place
Just above the roof of the pines.
Yet some small splinter of shade
Was nothing but another shadow.
We carried the streams of streams through seasons.
What sorrow and terrible wailing were heard
In all your lonely downcast corners,
Auschwitz, Majdanek, Thieresenstadt, Lod(.
Who gave them such places, O Lord,
Right on the edge of black forests?
We were taken in through their gates,
They let us up through their chimneys.
Gentle mother, make no friend
With the snake that even the snakes hate.
You ask why this song doesn't speak
To you of dreams and of opened gates?
Come and see the fallen wheels
On the ground and deep in the darkest mud.
Look at our fallen homes
And all the Jews and Gypsies broken!
But don't leave behind the dead, broken!
With whom we shared our hunger.
Don't let the snakes go free
Of what they wanted us to be.
Icicles eaten from the wire in winter
Will not freeze our tongues with weight.
We are watching still, brother,
The bend in the distant corner.
The bell that has been pealing
Is not the bell you heard before.
We will tear it to the ground
And use the old forged brass.
It will take us back around
The long five-cornered road.
I speak from the mossy earth to you—
Sound out your mouth ‘s violin!
