"The biggest challenge of translating Sachs into English, for me, had to do with tracking the movement of her mind in the forming of a poem."

Which vein burst / to offer the holy geometry of yearning / a homeland in your eyes?

That thing you forgot to do last year / has turned out to be important.

There was a rippling pond and the croaking of frogs / and various birds anas crecca, / there was the tingling of sand on the Borecké Rocks / and the cracking of pinecones

I asked a man I was in love with once / if he was in love with me. No, he said.

Get used to it, kid, everybody wants something from you. / And they’ll swear they’re giving you a gift.

Prague is falling behind the windows / like an autumn curtain falls on summer / like a fish falls after a whale

I’d listen to her work her way through its drama: the // little girl’s errors hitched to curiosity, her wandering hands, the / way the wolf and the girl had much more in common than not

say it / briefly // like / a finch’s whistle