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From “Modern German Poems”
Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky
AN OLD woman passes like a rotund tower | |
| Down the street, stormed by a leafy shower. | |
| Soon she disappears, and panting, trots | |
| Where black mists in gusty nooks are blowing. | |
| Now she’ll find a doorway, and be going | 5 |
| Slowly up the creaking steps, where glowing | |
| Sluggish pools of lamplight lie in blots. | |
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| Now she goes into her room: no stir, | |
| No one takes her jacket off for her. | |
| Shaking hands and legs are cold as stone. | 10 |
| Fluttering, weary, she begins to putter | |
| With her saved-up victuals and stale butter, | |
| While the fire lifts its feeble mutter. | |
| With her body she remains alone. | |
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| She forgets, while gulping down her buns, | 15 |
| That in her old frame there once grew—sons. | |
| (Ah, the joy in slippers to be shod!) | |
| Now her own with strangers she is sharing— | |
| She forgets the cry when she was bearing. | |
| Rarely, in a press of people faring, | 20 |
| A man calls her “mother” with a nod. | |
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| Think of her, O man, and think how we | |
| In this world remain a prodigy, | |
| Since we humans into time have hurled! | |
| How in the Unknown we dangle, gasping, | 25 |
| Looming shadows all about us grasping | |
| Soul and body, crushed in their strange clasping. | |
| This world cannot be the only world. | |
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| When she glides, so grizzled, through the room, | |
| Oh, perhaps she feels it in the gloom. | 30 |
| Sight is fading in her dim old eyes. | |
| Yes, she feels herself in all things growing, | |
| On her groaning knees she sinks down, glowing. | |
| As in a lamp’s little flicker showing, | |
| The vast face of God begins to rise. | 35 |
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