Would have martyrized nameless in a camp
would have drowned in common grave
would have choked in cattle-car
would have thrown into burning lime
would have pushed into gas chamber
and burned along with a million
whose ashes were blown by the wind
and hardly anyone would remember
even less sufficient would be the evidence
and it would be still harder to believe

(translated by Michael Szporer)

My wife died before I married her
before I fell in love with her
before I saw her
I don't even know her name

I only know that her breasts had yet to swell
with love as pure and white as milk
that her eyes were to light up my nights
that her lips were to warm my soul
and her hands were to balm my wounds
that without her it's dark here and cold
and nothing stops my bleeding

she didn't make it for her love
she didn't make it for her breasts and eyes and lips
her life
she died in nineteen forty one
or two or three
perhaps before she could walk
or talk or see
perhaps before she was born

that's why it is so empty in this Hades
where I was born a widower
and there's no place where I can go to claim her -
she didn't make it for my wedding canopy
where I am waiting until this day

They stand in a row like chimneys
the asphixiated black poplars
pointing to heaven
tall as the silence
they were growing here the whole time
in spite of
and above everything
and still they grow

here the air is dense with absence
clouds of absence in the air
and the nothing called oblivion
flies up to the sky
like a cloud

trampled by millions of feet
the great fields of Auschwitz
the Auschwitz fields of Majdanek
the Auschwitz fields of Treblinka
the Auschwitz fields of All This
on which we stand
which moves with us
wherever we try to go

so there is nowhere you can go from here
nor can you leave

having stopped in a row of poplars
I try to grow with them
and like them gaze
upward
with green eyes
I do not try to understand anything
nor to say anything
what else could there be
that needed saying here

I come to add my own
to the growing silence

(translated by Richard Lourie)

You didn't leave me your kingdom
you didn't leave me your temple
you didn't leave me your believers
you didn't leave me your faith
you didn't even leave me the dead
unless you count the fading call of the void
in the cleft air above my head

you didn't leave me retaliation
I don't even know at whom to shoot
from my poor sling
or what the murderer's name is -
Million
or Ten Million

you left me no friends after all
so why leave me enemies

and why did you so lavishly
make me the heir
to every quiver
of every last worn string
of your harp of isolation
and of vile unkingly suffering
O David...

(translated by Richard Lourie)