In A Summer Morning Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

I

A tapestry of sapphire ether,
My daybreak paths. Through
The latenight dark they led me
To mountains, where a rain
Of planet calm hovers
Over frightened windflowers, weeds,
And the freshly-cut raw earth.
But the young sun pours its clarity
Behind mountain forests, spraying
A geyser of colors, its radiant
Thoughts flicker lightnings
Over water. A silver lyre,
The air, and a chirping melody
Breathed into strings
Swayed by the wind. Far away,
The wheat-stalk dunes, waves
Of humid ochre — until
All the images of morning
Rise in wise awareness
In the tapestry of my words.

II

Oh, whence the green crystals, seams
Of shimmer on the mountains all around?
And the rosy, grassy valleys,
Where stars lie feverish. My blood
Blooming. Like the mind of a genius,
Zephyrs flow with warm puffs.
In the desert of the air, blues flourish
Like pellucid oases. The grasses
Forgive the footsteps that tread
On their green thought. A rivulet
Sings out on a violet plane,
Its rhyming voice of a lamb.
Through squirrelly, nutty woods,
Now losing all measures,
The sun strides with its fiery train —
And the cloverleaf covered with red.
The creator of plenty girded up
My feeling, he throbs in my pulse.
And my daybreak spirit warbles
Out of sleep, and awakes.

III

You, pitchblack, slender firtree,
Apart from the sun's stream!
You, transparent, turquoise spring well,
Whose mirrorsoul sings and amazes
My thought! You, diamond poppies
With hairy, sticky stems!
And you, dear chirpers, enthroned
In the air! All that is transient
And eternal — to you all now
My blessings! For all my senses
Are primeval, my body — armored
With time's garb of all times,
In your eternal bloodstreams
My blood streams too, and under
Your lovely, peaceful glances,
I am earthy — a trunk in the ground.
My life's mysterious destinies
Spring out of your depths.
We are bound by the same joys
And the same fire.

IV

Man, encountered on the road
Near ripe and scarlet orchards —
Our happy early meeting
Is a miracle, your every barefoot
Stepping trace — a tale
Of your fate's bloody struggle —
Though the sun has endowed its part
To you too, as to the dewy stalk —
You are close to my heart. I greet you:
Goodmorning, and offer my hand, we are
United by the colorful morning.
The sun, our primeval mother, cleanses
All the shadows, and smells of a garden
And of bluish perfumes of hay,
The breeze's trembling caress
Is a balm for our grief.
Silent brother, let us together
Plumb the foundations of the world,
The concealed stem of all stems,
The above and below.