PotW: To The Memory Of Albert Einstein

TO THE MEMORY OF ALBERT EINSTEIN

by Leibel Bergman

The thunderbolt within the grain of sand--
This is the power that the human hand
Has wrested from our ignorance and fear,
This climax of our yet few thousand years
Of work and strife. This is the promised land
We touch across the ocean of our tears.

How dark the night that was our painful past,
How bright the morning that we see at last,
How slight the bonds that hold us from the shore,
The curse of greed, the evil deeps of war;
These too will vanish though they yet hang fast,
The thief, the slayer, the inquisitor.

All these shall pass: yes, we shall end the blight
Of ignorance, for once for all, the fright
Of children, and the power of the lie,
The hunger, and the long despairing sigh.
We rout our darkness with the speed of light,
Set with our hand a candle in the sky.

1960

from: 

Will We Remember?

Chicago, 1982