What are the motifs in But Perhaps God Needs the Longing by Nelly Sachs?

The Holocaust is a recurring idea in this poem. The events of the Holocaust provide the defining image in Sachs's poetry. It is impossible to grasp what six million dead actually means. The number is too large to make sense. This is the fact that Sachs acknowledges in "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing." The many references to images without number, the stars and grains of sand, all refer to numbers without meaning.