Amanda Holmes reads Nelly Sachs’s “But Maybe God Needs Our Longing,” translated from the German by Stephanie Bastek. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
But maybe God needs our longing, where else
should it even stay,
Longing, which fills with kisses and tears and sighs
the mysterious spaces of the air—
Maybe it is the invisible soil from which sprout the glowing
roots of the stars—
And the radiant voice that calls out for reunion over
the fields of separation?
O my beloved, maybe our love has already
borne worlds in the sky of longing—
As our breath, in—and out, builds a cradle for life
and death?
Grains of sand, the both of us, dark before farewell, and lost
in the golden mystery of the born,
And maybe already set ablaze by the coming
stars, moons, and suns.
—Nelly Sachs, translated by Stephanie Bastek
