- Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car:
Here in this carload
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
If you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of man,
tell him that I
Interrupted scrawl –
Sunlight of water, velvet of sea-breeze, marble of foam:
My sepulchre.
You can die once, twice, thrice,
Even seventy times seven,
But you can't die a myriad times.
Oh, but I can.
My underground cells
Reach everywhere.
As the rain awakens the smell of wood, and
Even in darkness the leaves go on opening,
How intimate I grow with objects in rotting solitude.
I am alien and clear amongst you all,
I am cold, dicing with my eternities -
You envisage your image
In mine.
In vain.
I will leave you no memory,
You have never been part of me.
A mirror against a mirror against an enchanted mirror
I reflect in myself the earth.
With one shake of my skeletal hand
I shatter your day into a nightmare.
Flickers of light
Are the core of my soul – I have no fear.
I shall not die
In vain.
I shall not die
At all.
I seek no compromise.
______________________
* Dan Pagis (1930-1986), Israeli poet and Shoah survivor.