Silences Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

I saw an assembly of silences, all in blue.
I eavesdropped
On the purity of their muteness,
As the blood in sealed violins.
Describe them I cannot. Unless my heart stops.

From times and lands they came to hover here —
Souls that cannot die. Here in Eilat
They long for the bodies they once inhabited.

The silences glanced at each other. And I —
Covered my face, lest they hear
My breathing. And between my fingers, I saw:

Unmoving, a snake
With a silvery head.
A deer stands awake
In a dry desert bed —

An enchanted island
By the cool of the sea,
Like a syllable of silence —
Lost, and gentle, and free.

And a breeze from a land
Of invisible sills —
Has lost in the sand
Its red pearls, its frills.

Like a paper burnt to ash
Hangs an eagle in the sky,
And his shadow — a flash —
Lights my dreams and goes by.

But in tigery gorges
Someone moves in this frame.
And the silence that forges
Will remember his name.

1950