Olga Bergholz
My insatiable memory

My insatiable memory is like
A melting asphalt roadway:
I remember all who have passed along it,
Every movement of their life...
The tracks of iron wheels, of teeth,
The rusty tracks of injury and anguish.
Nearby the sweet birdlike prints
Of a dead daughter's little shoes.
Here, friends in succession have passed.
I remember all of them — why?
For they have forgotten me long ago —

And I shall never see them anymore.
There's one that passed along the edge.
The tracks of his reproach are darker.
Where is he living now? I do not know.
Perhaps, only in my memory.
A scoffing fate endowed me with
This memory as a punishment,
To plague me over the long years
With what my heart has burnt to ash.
Unconsciousness were better than a memory
Like melting asphalt, like a path —
An everlasting path under my footsteps
That cannot leave it, cannot be retraced.

Translated by Daniel Weissbort