honey and sting

This poem hits hard.

*****************************

I Didn’t Have the Privilege

I got away in time and God concealed
The terrors from me -
Why, why did I leave Poland ?

I did not have the privilege together with my nation
to go the way of flames,
and like an unforgivable sin, torments,
the guilt of remaining alive,
of remaining alive and composing rhymes.
The guilt will poison me,
unless I follow one of three figures,
who stand ready to hide me from guilt,
who wait and who heatedly call me:
One figure is holiness - the second is insanity,
Suicide is the third.

But suicide is too strong for me, the weakling,
My smallness cannot allow itself holiness,
And I can’t even go out of my mind.


Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith
by Aaron Zeitlin
http://www.jewishwebsight.com/tseytlin.html