We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches.

A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

This land, although not my native land, Will be remembered forever. And the sea's lightly iced, Unsalty water. The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk, The air is heady, like wine, And the rosy body of the pines Is naked in the sunset hour. And the sunset itself on such waves of ether That I just can't comprehend Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world, Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.

A loss, but who still mourns the breath of one woman, or laments one wife? Though my heart never can forget, how, for one look, she gave up her life.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.