The Smile Of Maidanek Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

I

No thicker than the membrane of an eye —
My neighbor's door.
No thicker than the spungold tavern
Where a weary dewdrop staggers in
For the night.
No thicker than a shadow
Flayed from the flesh —
Wherefore do I never succeed in opening the door
When, after all, the door was never locked?

And he, my bosom-friend,
My poison-friend,
Wherefore can he not go through the same door to his neighbor
And simply say to him good-morning?
The door is lucid as fear,
The door is not locked.

II

How far is a bygone second?
Just one second far
From any today and tomorrow.
My neighbor is himself a bygone second
Covered with a mask
To conceal
His wound.

III

My neighbor knocks on the door
As if to say:
A hollow attic vessel, the earth is cracked.
Just hit it a little harder
And it crumbles into ash and dust
And all the seas swing back into the sky

And put out the bonfires we call the stars.
So maybe you can lend me wings
To fly away to a safer planet?
Without a second thought, I'm moving out of here.

God's mercy on the earth-born.
Is it the apple's fault I carry such a hump?

IV

On a crematorium chimney in the Land of Poland,
Barefoot,
Feet dangling,
As in childhood
Fishing in lulav reedy water —
My neighbor sits.
He's dreaming:
The hook of his own pole
Trapped him
With a glimmering worm.

He is his own catcher
On the long
Thin pole.
He is himself his own legend.

V

What do you think he's doing on the chimney,
When someone long ago dredged up from the red belly
My neighbor's parchment city of Jews?
He holds a little mirror in his hand
And casts,
As in childhood
Spots of sun on grandpa's face —
A green smile, raining panic on old and young:

It won't let you dream, be silent, talk —
He casts out, casts into you
The smile of Maidanek.

VI

The smile of Maidanek falls
On wedding and bris.
In opera.
Theater.
In the wings.
In creases of your bread and salt,
Salty conscience.

The green smile falls
On your elegy, your ballad,
On every tremor
Of a sound.

The smile falls
With hissing fire
Into the best wine,
Burgundy
Or Tokay.
It falls on squat depots,
Barely mapped, like mushrooms.
On the tall building of the United
Nations,
And higher — on the silver wanderer
To the abysses.

VII

And nobody knows that on anointed,
High-domed
Summer nights,
In snowy or rainy spaces,
Barefoot,
Feet dangling, as in childhood —
My neighbor sits in Poland on a chimney,
Ponders the beautiful reality that is not real,
And what my neighbor does is ever the same:
He holds in his hand a little mirror. Nothing more.

1966