Signs Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

Show me a sign that I am your sign,
I will become a hymn, soaring like a pine.

A sign that I am chosen in your field
And all my falling leaves are healed.

Show me a sign in a buzzing bee
Seeking red honey for the grief in me.

A sign that you ache with my gray hair
And cuddle my feet in grass so fair.

I seek your voice from first dawn blue,
That the last breath has meaning too.

A woodpecker pecks at a tree. Send a beak
To peck into me the essence oblique.

That I belong with the lightning and with the worm
And with the sea, pulled out of your arm.

The sea lands on the shore and won't swim back.
Show me a sign. Like of foam a speck.

Show me a sign that in your memory borne
Is a red rose of me the thorn.

Just one image left to see
Of all the visions you revealed to me.

1968