Levi - The Survivor

The name of the factory where I worked while I was a prisoner. Cf. Siegfried Sassoon, Everyone sang. Cf. Inferno III:57, Purgatory V:134, and T. S.

Eliot, The Waste Land: I had not thought death had undone so many.

Shem means Hear in Hebrew. It is the first word of the basic prayer of Judaism, which affirms the unity of God. Some lines of this poem paraphrase it. Wstawa means get up in Polish. M. M.

RILKE Cf. Herbsttag, from Das Buch der Bilder.

Cf. Catullus, V, 4. Fssoli, near Carpi, was the site of the transit camp for prisoners bound for deportation. T. S. S.

Eliot, The Hollow Men: This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.

Cf. H. Heine, Buch der Lieder, Die Nordsee, II, 9: Glcklich der Mann, der den Hafen erreicht hatBereshit, in the beginning, is the first word of Holy Scripture. On the big bang, to which allusion is made, see for example Scientific American, June 1970. Scientific American, December 1974. Nebbish is a Yiddish word. Nebbish is a Yiddish word.

It means stupid, useless, inept.

Cf. F. Villon, Le Testament, 1. 1720. Night watchman in German (it was a technical term in the Lager). Night watchman in German (it was a technical term in the Lager).

The first line is from Isaiah 22:11.

Cf. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, l. Cf. S. T. T.

Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, l. 582, and Inferno XXXIII:141.

Born 1919, Turin, Italy Died 1987, Turin, Italy All poems are taken from Collected Poems, first published in 1988. UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com. All poems taken from Collected Poems, first published 1988 This selection first published 2018 Copyright Ad ora incerta, Garazanti Editore s.p.a, Milano, 1984 Copyright Altre poesie, 1997 Translation copyright Collected Poems: English translation Jonathan Galassi, 2015 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted ISBN: 978-0-241-33943-5 Wounded feet and cursed earth, The line long in the gray mornings. Bunas thousand chimneys smoke, A day like every other day awaits us.

The sirens are terrific in the dawn: You, multitude with wasted faces, Another day of suffering begins On the monotonous horror of the mud. I see you in my heart, exhausted comrade; Suffering comrade, I can read your eyes. In your breast you have cold hunger nothing The last courage has been broken in you. Gray companion, you were a strong man, A woman traveled next to you. Empty comrade who has no more name, A desert who has no more tears, So poor that you have no more pain, So exhausted you have no more fear, Spent man who was a strong man once: If we were to meet again Up in the sweet world under the sun, With what face would we confront each other? December 28, 1945

But then when we began to sing Those good old silly songs of ours, It was as if everything Was still the way it used to be. A day was nothing but a day: And seven of them make a week.

Killing was something wrong to us; Dying, something far away. And the months pass rather fast, But there are still so many left! We were merely young again: Not martyrs, infamous, or saints. This and much else came to mind While we kept on singing; But they were things like clouds, And not easy to explain. January 3, 1946

Id like to believe something beyond, Beyond death destroyed you. Id like to be able to say the fierceness With which we wanted then, We who were already drowned, To be able someday to walk again together Free under the sun. January 9, 1946 Ive come from very far away To bring bad news.

I crossed the mountain, I flew through the low cloud, I saw my belly mirrored in the pond. I flew without rest, A hundred miles without rest, To find your window, To find your ear, To bring you the sad news To take the joy from your sleep, To spoil your bread and wine, To sit in your heart each evening. So he sang obscenely dancing Outside the window, on the snow. When he stopped, he stared malevolent, Etched a cross on the ground with his beak, And spread his black wings. January 9, 1946

You who live safe In your heated houses You who come home at night to find Hot food and friendly faces: Consider if this is a man, Who toils in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for half a loaf Who dies by a yes or a no. Consider if this is a woman, With no hair and no name With no more strength to remember With empty eyes and a womb as cold As a frog in winter.

Ponder that this happened: I consign these words to you. Carve them into your hearts At home or on the street, Going to bed or rising: Tell them to your children. Or may your house fall down, May illness make you helpless, And your children turn their eyes from you. January 10, 1946

In the savage nights we dreamed Dense and violent dreams Dreamed with soul and body: Of returning; eating; telling. Until the dawn command Resounded curt and low: Wstawa; And our hearts broke in our breasts. Now were home again.

Our bellies are full, Weve finished telling. Its time. Soon well hear again The strange command: Wstawa.January 11, 1946

What is sadder than a train? That leaves on time, That only makes one sound, That only goes one way. Nothings sadder than a train. Unless it is a cart horse. Its locked between two poles.

It cant even look askance. Its whole life is plodding. And a man? Isnt a man sad? If he lives alone for long If he thinks time is over, A mans a sad thing, too. January 17, 1946

Lord, it is time: the wines fermenting now. The time has come to have a house, Or to go without one a long time. January 29, 1946 I know what it means not to come back. January 29, 1946 I know what it means not to come back.

Through barbed wire Ive seen The sun go down and die. Ive felt the old poets words Tear at my flesh: Suns can set and rise again: For us, once our brief light is spent, Theres one endless night to sleep. February 7, 1946

I looked for you in the stars When as a child I questioned them. I asked the mountains for you But all they gave me were a few moments of solitude and short-lived peace. Since you werent there, those long evenings I contemplated the mad blasphemy That the world was one of Gods mistakes, And I was one of the worlds. But when, in the face of death, I shouted no with every fiber, That I wasnt through, That I still had too much to do, It was because you were there in front of me, You with me beside you, as today, A man a woman under the sun.