O the night of the weeping children! O the night of the children branded for death! Sleep may not enter here. Terrible nursemaids Have usurped the place of mothers ...
ATTRIBUTION:
Nelly Sachs (1891–1970), German Jewish poet and translator; relocated to Sweden. “O the night of the weeping children!” Lines 1-5, translated by Michael Hamburger, et al. (1967; first edition in German: 1946).
Sachs was cowinner of the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature.
