Divine Comedy Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

When in another incarnation
You seat me in your garden spheres,
Do not create me young again
And fervent, but replete with years.

And later, do not drive me out
Full of God's mockery and wrath.
I want to taste both from the tree
Of life and from the tree of death.

I want to taste the real tree
Of poisoned pain in your dark shade —
In vise of silence I endure,
For in your image am I made.

A serpent then may flick its tongue —
One snake, a second and a third —
Just so that night with its gray hair
Should not impose its rule, unheard.

Just so that to the gushing spring
The mouths of my thin fingers flung —
Till every drop inside my body,
Instead of growing old, grows young.

If I live long enough to see
My childhood, in my youth advance —
My cat will wash her gentle paws
And in his joy my dog will dance.

1979