They Search Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

A search all around. Any peep is a knife.
The bloodhounds — steps of a wrathful God.
But who protected us both with a fog?
Do you see? It envelops us … You nod …

Do you see the palace of gray, where all colors
Like suffocated babies sink in the gray.
We lie there in tandem like naked sheaves:
The fog and us two — all the rest swam away.

But in the no-one-ness, my mouth clinging tight
To red glints. Only now can I see how they part:
Out of the gray, your lips are abloom!
But who has created this purple art?

The fog has created them! See their red tips
Sever themselves from bodies and mind.
They float. For this is the nature of lips:
To love only others, drunken and blind.

Vilna Ghetto, 1941