Nelly Sachs Quotes

Chorus of Comforters

We are gardeners who have no flowers,
No herb may be transplanted
From yesterday to tomorrow.
The sage has faded in the cradles--
Rosemary lost its scent facing the new dead--
Even wormwood was only bitter yesterday.
The blossoms of comfort are too small
Not enough for the torment of a child's tear.

New seed may perhaps be gathered
In the heart of a nocturnal singer.
Which of us may comfort?
In the depth of the defile
Between yesterday and tomorrow
The cherub stands
Grinding the lightnings of sorrow with his wings
But his hands hold apart the rocks
Of yesterday and tomorrow
Like the edges of a wound

Which must remain open
That may not yet heal.

The lightnings of sorrow do not allow
The field of forgetting to fall asleep.

Which of us may comfort?

We are gardeners who have no flowers
And stand upon a shining star
And weep.

Instead of a homeland I hold the metamorphoses of the world.

To me, a fairy tale seems to have become reality.

You remember the footprint

All that is forgotten you remember from eternity

You remember the footprint which filled with death
As the myrmidon approached.
You remember the child's trembling lips
As they had to learn their farewell to their mother.
You remember the mother's hands which scooped out a grave
For the child which had starved at her breast.
You remember the mindless words
That a bride spoke into the air to her dead bridegroom.

But silence is where victims dwell.

We mothers rock into the heart of the world the melody of peace.

The Woman Who Forgot Everything

But in old age all drifts in blurred immensities.
The little things fly off and up like bees.

You forgot all the words and forgot the object too;
And reached your enemy a hand where roses and nettles grew.

When sleep leaves the body like smoke and man, sated with secrets, drives the overworked nag of quarrel out of its stall, then the fire-breathing union begins anew ...

We breathed the air of freedom without knowing the language or any person.

Always
there where children die
stone and star
and so many dreams
become homeless.

World, they have taken the small children like butterflies and thrown them, beating their wings, into the fire

When sleep enters the body like smoke
and man journeys into the abyss
like an extinguished star that is lighted elsewhere,
then all quarrel ceases,
overworked nag that has tossed the nightmare grip
of its rider.

Chorus of Clouds

We are full of sighs, full of glances,
We are full of laughter
And sometimes we wear your faces.
We are not far from you.
Who knows how much of your blood rose
And stained us?
Who knows how many tears you have shed
Because of our weeping? How much longing formed us?
We play at dying,
Accustom you gently to death.
You, the inexperienced, who learn nothing in the nights.
Many angels are given you
But you do not see them.

Bewitched is half of everything.

We are so stricken

We are so stricken
that we think we're dying
when the street casts an evil word at us.
The street does not know it,
but it cannot stand such a weight;
it is not used to seeing a Vesuvius of pain
break out.
Its memories of primeval times are obliterated,
since the light became artificial
and angels only play with birds and flowers
or smile in a child's dream