The ghost of life/Gratitude Monday: A pilgrim in winter

It’s Gratitude Monday. But, also, Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins today at sundown. Today’s National Poetry Month entry combines both.

Born in Vilna (then part of the Russian empire, now Belarus) in 1913, Avrom Sutzkever wrote his poetry in Yiddish, whether he was in Vilna, Moscow or Tel Aviv. Active in Vilna’s arts and cultural scene, Sutzkever added anti-Nazi resistance work to his repertoire when the Germans occupied the country.

During an Aktion in 1941, Sutzkever escaped to the countryside and was hidden by a barefoot peasant woman named Yanova Bertushevitz; she and her husband kept the poet in their cellar and managed to smuggle food into the ghetto to his family. Eventually his worry about the danger to his protectors and his family led him to return to Vilna, but he did not forget her gift to him.

  

“1980”

And when I go up as a pilgrim in winter, to recover

the place I was born, and the twin to self I am in my mind,

then I'll go in black snow as a pilgrim to find

the grave of my savior, Yanova.

She'll hear what I whisper, under my breath:

Thank you. You saved my tears from the flame.

Thank you. Children and grandchildren you rescued from death.

I planted a sapling (it doesn't suffice) in your name.

Time in its gyre spins back down the flue

faster than nightmares of nooses can ride,

quicker than nails. And you, my savior, in your cellar you'll hide

me, ascending in dreams as a pilgrim to you.

You'll come from the yard in your slippers, crunching the snow

so I'll know. Again I'm there in the cellar, degraded and low,

you're bringing me milk and bread sliced thick at the edge.

You're making the sign of the cross, I'm making my pencil its pledge.

I think today of the people who protect their loved ones and their communities by staying home—in much better circumstances than Yanova and Sutzkever—and I’m grateful. In the face of fear and death, they are choosing compassion and life.