In Sand and Water

Noah Stern

1943

In sand and in water
You will yet raise expectant eyes,
Or eyes
As indifferent as death to machine-gun bullets and borders on maps.
Together with you
Yet another sought to escape
(At long last to escape)
The ugly beasts,
Yet another believed he’d partaken of your moldy bread
(Or did not partake and died like a helpless infant)
And gazed without…
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Creator Bio

Noah Stern

1912–1960

Hebrew poet and translator Noah Stern was born in Jonava, Lithuania. He immigrated first as a teenager to the United States, where he attended Harvard and was admitted to graduate studies at Columbia. He moved to Palestine in 1935, where he translated for the newspaper Davar and taught in a high school in Tel Aviv. During World War II, Stern served in the Jewish brigade. He translated T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, to good reviews, and Richard Wright’s Black Boy. However, his own works were recognized only after his suicide, two years after serving a five-year term in prison for attempted murder.

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