Urn

Stanislaw Wygodzki

1948

This urn will be made of fired clay
Of native soil, from Poland, my country
In it are lodged the ashes of my parents
My brothers, daughter, and wife.
The urn will be simple, like a jug
With a small lid, and not like a vase
So that it can hold a thick mist of gas
Painful as night and gray like dawn.

Translated by
Antony
Polonsky
.
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Creator Bio

Stanislaw Wygodzki

1907–1997

Stanislaw Wygodzki was born in Bedzin, Silesia, Poland, to a deeply Zionist family. However, as a young man, he was drawn to radical ideals of internationalism and, in the 1920s, was jailed for his communist activities. In 1933, he published his first political poetry volume, Roll Call, which was soon followed by A Leaf’s Element (1936). A survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, Wygodzki lost his entire family during the Holocaust. After the war, he remained in Poland and became a prominent translator of Yiddish, as well as a Polish writer of poems and short stories, primarily about children and the Holocaust. In 1968, he immigrated to Israel as a result of the increasing antisemitism of communist Poland.

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