Nelly Sachs
Line Like
Line like
living hair
drawn
deathnightobscured
from you
to me.
Reined in
outside
I bend
thirstily
to kiss the end of all distances.
Evening
throws the springboard
of night over the redness
lengthens your promontory
and hesitant I place my foot
on the trembling string
of my death already begun.
But such is love–
German; trans. Michael Hamburger
Nelly Sachs, German, trans. Michael Hamburger, O
the Chimneys,
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1967.