But perhaps God needs the longing, wherever else should it dwell,
Which with kisses and tears and sighs fills mysterious spaces of air –
And perhaps is invisible soil from which roots of stars grow and swell –
And the radiant voice across fields of parting which calls to reunion there?
O my beloved, perhaps in the sky of longing worlds have been born of our love –
Just as our breathing, in and out, builds a cradle for life and death?
We are grains of sand, dark with farewell, lost in births’ secret treasure trove,
Around us already perhaps future moons, suns, and stars blaze in a fiery wreath.
(translated by Ruth & Matthew Mead)

Nelly Sachs (1891 – 1970) was born in Berlin, Germany. On the verge of deportation to a concentration camp in 1940, she escaped with a few others to Stockholm. She began working as a translator of German poetry and in her own writing the Holocaust was the underlying theme. In 1966 she shared a Nobel Prize in literature and was cited for her “works of forgiveness, of deliverance, of peace.” Her poetry’s power comes from her absolute attention – Simon Weil’s definition of prayer. (taken from “Women in Praise of the Sacred”)

I was hard pressed to make a choice among poems of Nelly Sachs. They are all hauntingly beautiful – and in some ways enigmatic. In this poem, the longing – of God, of the poet, of the individual soul – seems tangible but at the same time ephemeral. This longing for God, for the Other, fills the spaces of air, gives root to stars, gives birth to worlds and builds a cradle for life and death. This longing for union easily crosses the vastness of space and time, even though we are, our love is, as infinitesimal as grains of sand in the cosmos. She infers that reunion of not merely a hope or a possibility, but in my reading of the poem, a certainty. Does God need this longing for reunion for continuing creation? As the primordial desire leading to manifestation? If so, this longing is more than desire; it is essence of love.