Fugitive Footsteps
Written by KSU Composer-in-Residence Dr. Laurence Sherr

This work is dedicated to his mother, Alice Bacharach Sherr. Born in Egelsbach, Germany in 1931, she was sent on a Kindertransport to a children’s home in Switzerland in 1939. She was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.

World, do not ask those snatched from death
by Nelly Sachs

World, do not ask those snatched from death
where they are going,
they are always going to their graves.
The pavements of the foreign city
were not laid for the music of fugitive footsteps—
The windows of the houses that reflect a lifetime
of shifting tables heaped with gifts from a picture-book
heaven—
were not cut for eyes
which drank terror at its source.
World, a strong iron has cauterized the wrinkle of their
smile;
they would like to come to you
because of your beauty,
but for the homeless all ways wither
like cut flowers—

But we have found a friend
in exile: the evening sun.
Blessed by its suffering light
we are bidden to come to it with our sorrow
which walks beside us:
A psalm of night.

“World, do not ask” from O THE CHIMNEYS by Nelly Sachs, translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead. Translation copyright ©1970 and translation copyright renewed ©1998 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Used by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.