We orphans we lament to the world: World, why have you taken our soft mothers from us And the fathers who say: My child, you are like me! We orphans are like no one in this world any more! O world We accuse you!
ATTRIBUTION:
Nelly Sachs (1891–1970), German Jewish poet and translator; relocated to Sweden. “Chorus of the Orphans,” lines 25-30, translated by Michael Hamburger, et al. (1967; first edition in German: 1946).
Sachs was cowinner of the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature.
