Only childhood gets no older: me and Avrom Sutzkever in The Potomac

Thanks Charles Rammelkamp for including three poems of mine in the latest issue of The Potomac — one original work, and two translations from Avrom Sutzkever’s Diary Poems. (And don’t forget to check out Carol Berkower‘s lovely verse in the same issue!)

Here’s one of those translations of Sutzkever’s Yiddish:

1975

Explain it? Explain it how?

The sun didn’t turn colder,

but she won’t melt tears

and only childhood gets no older.

Youth, her brother, was trampled

like red grapes in the cellar.

The shadow’s hair turns silver

and only childhood gets no older.

Her snows and her violets

are not to be had for gold.

Her king grows old, as does his kingdom

and only childhood gets no older.

From Diary Poems by Avrom Sutzkever,

translated from the Yiddish