Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry

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POETS ON THE EDGE
SUNY series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Sarah Blacher Cohen, editor
POETS ON THE EDGE

An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry
Selected and translated by Tsipi Keller

Introduction by Aminadav Dykman
Cover image: Michael Sgan-Cohen (19441999), HAOR ROAH, acrylic on canvas,

40x40 cm.
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany, by arrangement with The Institute for
the Translation of Hebrew Literature
2008 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Meehan
Marketing by Susan M. Petrie
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Poets on the edge : an anthology of contemporary Hebrew poetry / selected and
edited by Tsipi Keller ; introduction by Aminadav Dykman.
p. cm. (SUNY series in modern Jewish literature and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7914-7685-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7914-7686-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Israeli poetryTranslations into English. I. Keller, Tsipi. II. Dykman,
Aminadav.
PJ5059.E3P64 2009
892.4'1708dc22
2008014208
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
PREFACE xvii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxi
INTRODUCTION Aminadav Dykman xxiii
YEHUDA AMICHAI (from Open Shut Open, 1998)
I Was Not One of the Six Million. And What Is the Span of My Life?
Open Shut Open 1
The Precision of Pain and the Blurring of Bliss
A Touch of Yearning in Everything (third section) 4
My Parents Motel 5
The Jewish Time Bomb 7
T. CARMI (from Monologues and Other Poems, 1988; Truth & Consequence, 1993)
And Until When? 9
If It So Pleases 10
Nightwatch 11
A Time for Everything 12
Monologue of the Deserted (II) 13
In Memory of Dan Pagis (19301986) 13
Monologue in the Twilight of His Life 16
Lonely Womans Monologue 17
Chess at the Seashore 18
An Explosion in Jerusalem 18
Mortication of the Soul 19
The Mouth 20
From the Diary of a Divorc 21
DAN PAGIS (from Late Leisure, 1964; Transformation, 1970; Synonyms, 1982;
Last Poems, 1987)
Tempt the Devil 24
Ein Leben 25
Wall Calendar 25
The End of Winter 26
Memorial Night 27
*(First line: You arrive slightly late)
A Linguistic Problem 28
Diagnosis 28
Anecdote 29
Testimony 29
Browsing through the Album 30
Houses 31
27
NATAN ZACH (from Hard to Remember, 1984; Since Im in the Neighborhood, 1996)
A Belated Poem 32
To Rise from Ashes 33
Self-Portrait at Night 34
Meantime 35
As Agreed 36
Three Poems That Werent Written 36
Widow 38
Hayuta 39
Comrade Poet 40
A Small Error in the Machine 41
Goodbye Berlin 41
Confession: Gentle 42
And Then We Had 43
SHIN SHIFRA (from Womans Song, 1962; The Next Step, 1968; Poems
19731985 (1987); A Woman Who Practices How to Live, Poems 19861999
(2001)
That Made Me Woman
The Spider of Sin 46
On Rain 46
Conceit 47
vi
CO NTE NTS
45
Lie 47
Father 47
A Stranger 47
In This Split Second 48
Sabbath Prayer 48
Summer 49
This Evening 49
Ecclesiastes 50
Goat 50
Moonstruck 51
Dove 51
Vegetarian 52
Shame 53
A Woman Who Practices How to Live
53
ISRAEL HAR (from Edge of Darkness and Bread, 1994)

Morning in a Foreign Place 56
Grave in the Sun 57
A Cradle Story 58
A Sour Pickle the Angel of Death 60
Dust Instead of Glory 61
Australian Story 63
Paupers Talk 63
And Tomorrow I Too to Die Like This 64
DAVID AVIDAN (from Something for SomebodySelected Poems 19521964)

The Stain Remained on the Wall
Housing 69
Incident 71
Interim Summation 72
Power of Attorney 73
Personal Problems 74
Dance Music 75
Will Power 76
Safe Distance 76
Last-Last 77
Experiments in Hysterics 77
68
CON T EN T S
vii
DAHLIA RAVIKOVITCH (from Mother with Child, 1992)

An Exceptional Autumn 79
An Attempt to Express an Opinion 80
On Life and on Death 81
Omens 82
The Cat 83
Ready Alert 83
Lying Upon the Water 84
But She Had a Son 85
Grand Days Have Gone By Her 86
A Mother Goes About 88
The Tale about the Arab Who Died in the Fire
Lullaby 89
Train of Thought 90
Rina Slavin 91
The Greenness of Leaves 93
A Private History 94
A Beetles Life 94
88
ASHER REICH (from Selected Poems, 1986; Works on Paper, 1988; Fictitious
Facts, 1993; Winter Music, 1996)
The History of My Heart 95
Fragments 96
New York: First Swim 97
New York: Second Swim 97
Requiem to a Dog in the Rain 98
Sights 99
Mud 99
Nights 100
Mornings 101
The Music of the Cosmos 103
A Recurring Memory 104
Fence 104
Photograph 105
A Different Sensation 105
Odors 106
HEDVA HARECHAVI (from I Only Want to Tell You, 1985)

Tonight I Saw 108
When She Goes Out Alone
viii
CO NTE NTS
109
Imagine, Carving the Sky 109

When the Music Subsided 111
Like Back Then When I Was Escorted 111
Like in the Passing Year 111
Like a Binging Preying Beast 112
A Very Cheerful Girl 113
Go, Go Wherever You Go, But Go 115
Already Night, Already Day 116
For Ruth 118
Here Everything 118
NURIT ZARHI (from The Fish, 1987; Village of Spirits, 1994; Hypnodrom Hotel,
1998)
*(First line: For they are at the center of my life) 120
*(First line: The rain reveals the hidden names of leaves)
*(First line: Forgive my outburst, Sir) 122
Baby Blues 122
The Marked Ship 124
Convincing Herself Shes a Picture 125
Nights 126
Lightly 128
Stone 129
121
MEIR WIESELTIER (from Exit to the Sea, 1981; The Concise Sixties, 1984;
Warehouse, 1995)
A Naive Painting 130
To Be Continued 131
Condolences 132
A Moving Electric Message 132
Only in Hebrew 134
My Wisdom 134
Cheese 135
The Bible in Pictures II 136
Burning Holy Books 137
The 19th Century: Nohant, June 76
The Lost Uncles 139
The Fowl of the Air 139
The Flower of Anarchy 140
Not a Poem 141
138
CON T EN T S
ix
A Childish Farewell Song to a Prime Minister

The Wheel of the Century 142
141
RUTH BLUMERT (from Exiles on a Strange Planet, 1991; Acquaintance from

Another Age, 1996)
Antiques 143
The Combination 144
In Time 144
Entropy 145
Chances 145
Breaks 146
The Departure from the Garden of Eden 146
Jerusalem, Bus #18, 1986 147
Waves of Love 149
Silent Film 150
Letter 150
Additional Dimensions 152
Metamorphosis 152
Morning 153
Lost in the Alleys of the Flat 153
*(First line: Most of the time I doze) 154
YONA WALLACH (from Appearance, 1985)

All the Trees 156
House Said the House 157
Come to Me Like a Capitalist 158
Tuvia 159
Sleep with Me Like a Journalist 161
Come to Me Like a Jew 163
Lets Make a Little Philosophy 164
All At Once Everything Seems Dear 164
Woman Becomes Tree 165
When You Come Lie with Me Come Like My Father
167
RAQUEL CHALFI (from Free Fall, 1979; Matter, 1990; Love of the Dragon, 1995)
Travelling to Jerusalem on a Moon Night
Hair of Night 170
CO NTE NTS
169
The Water Queen of Jerusalem 171

Reckless Love 172
I Drew My End Near 173
Sitting in the Wall 174
Monologue of the Witch Impregnated by the Devil
And the Whiteness Grew Stark 175
Elegy for a Friend Who Lost Her Mind 176
A Concealed Passenger 177
Blues in a Jar 177
German Boot 178
174
MORDECHAI GELDMAN (from Eye, 1993; The Book of Asking, 1997)

Friendly Dragon 185
Porno 2 187
Porno 3 188
The Hottentot Venus (Porno 7) 188
Holy Ground 190
Dolinger 191
Tonight I Yield 193
I Wont Travel This Summer 193
Abused Neighbor 195
Yes 196
Why a Frog 196
Almost Flowers 197
RUTH RAMOT (from Slices of Heaven, 1994; Sealed Waves, 1998)

Blue Prince 198
*(First line: I leave, taking with me) 199
They Assault Me the Flowers 199
*(First line: Quiet and an evening breeze) 200
In the Soft Curve 200
The Scent of Wind 201
Painting 201
*(First line: The moon doesnt t here) 202
Toward Evening 202
Hot in the Corner Caf 203
Arithmetic 204
Time-Saturated 204
Love Song 205
CON T EN T S
xi
Room Number Forty 205

Nuns 206
*(First line: Yesterday, when I sat in the caf)
207
AGI MISHOL (from Fax Pigeon, 1991; The Interior Plain, 1995; Look There, 1999;
New and Collected Poems, 2003)
So Overbearing Had Become 208
*(First line: I remember a short speech) 209
It Seems Miraculous to Her 210
Turning to Rest in Sapphos Poems 210
Afternoon Nap 211
The Interior Plain 211
Revelation 212
Like a Bird Tagged 212
In Her Bed 212
The Sacred Cow of Hardship 213
The Irritating Manner in Which I Exist in Your Fancy
From the Depth I Called Hey 214
When Soft Angel Plumage 215
Morning and She Pees 215
Estate 216
Woman with Pitchfork 217
Nocturnal I 218
Nocturnal II 220
Shaheeda 221
DAN ARMON (from Duration, 1986; Footprints, 1989)

The Squash Watchman 223
The Apple the Cucumber and the Plum 224
Midas of Sugar 224
Stairwell 225
*(First line: In a temporary shelter 226
Play in the Kitchen 227
*(First line: In a gesture of argument) 228
Eight Short Ones 229
Baking 230
*(First line: In a dark backyard) 231
Fire 231
Candle 232
xii
CO NTE NTS
214
*(First line: The wondrous wilting of a ower) 232

Song of the Valley 233
*(First line: Weve stabilized the emotion) 234
Travel 234
YITZHAK LAOR (from Night in a Foreign Hotel, 1992; And Loveth Many
Days, 1996)
A Note 236
Silhouette 237
Sleeping in Another Place 237
Poetry 238
Gouging 239
Sweat 239
The Narrators Death 240
MAYA BEJERANO (from Selected Poems, 19721986; Voice, 1987; Beauty Is

Rage, 2001)
Poetry 244
Data Processing #10 245
Lust 248
Dont Stop the Motion 249
Passion-Dress 249
The Hands of Autumn 250
A Galilean Landscape, Important to Note
Pecan Leaves 252
251
RONNY SOMECK (from Rice ParadiseSelected Poems 19761996)

Dog After Dog 255
Greek Music 256
Solo 257
A Soldier in the Desert. A Romance in Photos 257
Johnny 258
From a Distance the Tombstones Look Like a Flock of Storks
Handcuffs. Street Poem 259
Poverty Line 260
258
CON T EN T S
xiii
Jasmine. A Poem on Sandpaper 260

Autumn. A French Movie 261
Tear Comptroller Report 261
Thirty Seconds to Charge the Nipple 262
Tractors 262
Lions Milk 263
Poem to a Girl Already Born 263
In Answer to a Question: When Did Your Peace Begin?
A Pound of Child 264
Blues on the Life That Was Almost Mine 264
Rice Paradise 265
264
HAVA PINHAS-COHEN (from The Passage of the Doe, 1994; A River and
Forgetfulness, 1998)
Explicitly Named 267
On the Eve of the Holiday 268
Fear 269
Variable Texture 270
Boundaries 271
Time 271
Piet 272
The Way to the River 273
A Hand Empty of Body 273
AMIR OR (from Face, 1991; Ransoming the Dead, 1994; Poem, 1996)
A Pint of Beer 277
From the White Dictionary
No Trail Markers 279
Synopsis 281
Immortal 282
Poem (six sections) 282
277
TAMIR GREENBERG (from Self-Portrait with Quantum and a Dead Cat, 1993;
The Thirsty Soul, 2002)
Ode 290
Son 292
Dusk 294
xiv
CO NTE NTS
Elegy 294
My Grandma Rachel Age Fifteen
Annabel Lee 301
Poetics 1 301
Poetics 2 302
Poetics 3 302
Journey 1 302
Journey 2 302
299
SHARRON HASS (from The Mountain Mother Is Gone, 1997; The Stranger and
the Everyday Woman, 2001)
Our Life Is the Life of Beasts 304
To the Fox 305
The Stranger 306
The Great Illusion 309
The Flutist 309
I Stand in the Circle and Look Around Me
Afternoon Slumber 311
Smooth Boys 311
The Suns Mooring 312
The Girl Fumbles 313
Beyond the Forest 313
310
AFTERWORD The Poems of Irit Katzir 315

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 327
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES 329
CON T EN T S
xv
PREFACE
Translation is the art of revelation. It makes the unknown known.

The translator artist has the fever and craft to recognize, re-create,
and reveal the work of the other artist. But even when famous
at home, the work comes into an alien city as an orphan.
Willis Barnstone, The Poetics of Translation:
History, Theory, Practice by Willis Barnstone,
Yale University Press, p. 265 (1993)
The gist of this anthology began twenty years ago while I was reading Dan Pagiss poem Ein Leben in his posthumous collection Last
Poems. As I read it again and again, I began to hear it in English and,
like a somnambulist, reached for pen and paper. The poem sang to
me in Hebrew and then resonated and sang to me in English, and,
being a writer myself, I had to translate it.
It seems a natural progression for a bilingual writer, living in the
country of her adopted language, to look back to her country and
language of origin and wish to create a bridge not only for herself but
for the reading public in her new country. Translators often are poets
and writers who, for the love of literature, are determined to bring
over an orphan and set it in our midst, hoping we will appreciate
its merit and make it welcome in its new home.
Israel is small but not insular. Reading world literature translated
into Hebrew is widespread, and many Israeli authors and readers, by
necessity and/or by birth, are bilingual or trilingual. Literary events,
xvii
both local and international, are part of the everyday discourse. Poems
and short stories appear in the pages of the major dailies, as do translations of foreign works. It often seems that every other Israeli considers
himself or herself a poet and/or a prophet. There is an intoxicating
feeling of nervous creativity, a feeling I recall from the late 1960s and
early 1970s when I sat in Kassit, a Tel Aviv caf, surrounded by writers and poetssome of whom are included in this anthologywho
drank, laughed, and argued late into the night. At the time, television
sets were few and rare (even telephone lines were hard to get), and
yet we felt connected to a larger world that was rapidly changing. We
adopted jazz, pop music, and Sartres nant; the counterculture of the
1960s also had a great impact.
At the same time, as the growing cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem,
and Haifa came into their own, so did the poets living in them. A
new urban edginess, a sense of freedom, and a celebration of that
freedom permeated their poems, not always understood or welcome
in a country that until then embraced the ideals of the pioneer and
of tilling the land. These new poets read their overseas contemporaries,
such as Auden and Plath, Ginsberg and Lowell, to name a few. Like
their fellow postmodernists, they discovered the night and recognized
their urban surroundings and daily lives as subject matter. And, most
important, they rejected the rigid verse forms and the stilted poetic
language of their predecessors in favor of the evolving Hebrew they
heard spoken on the street.
A lot has been said about the sepulchral weight that Hebrew
has had to carry, the weight of being
(the holy language
of the Bible), so holy in fact that to this day the strictest Hasids in
Israel reserve Hebrew for prayer and the study of the Torah and use
Yiddish in their daily and business lives. But a living, spoken language
cannot be kept in a historical or religious museum, no matter how
hard one might try to stie her unruly voice (Pagiss, A Linguistic
Problem p. 28).
Still, the Bible and the Talmud are taught in the schools in
Israel, and so the Bible and the mekorot (sources) are an integral
part of everyday life and speech. Shalom Aleichems Tevyethe dairyman who, like his neighbors in the shtetl, quotes and misquotes the
Biblewould feel at home in present-day Israel. These references and
allusions are commonly heard and used side by side with new slang
xviii
PRE FACE
words, with locutions and technical terms borrowed from English, and
with curses and obscenities taken, most frequently, from Arabic and
Russian; modern Hebrew, derived as it is from the Old Testament, is
relatively impoverished in this respect, though developing.
This fusion of high and low, of the colloquial and the archaic,
makes for interesting and exuberant juxtapositions. Biblical allusions
abound in the poems here, sometimes as straightforward quotes, often
playfully and ironically; many of the notes I provide point these out
when they are crucial to the poem.
Most of the twenty-seven poets introduced here have never
been published in this country before. The more I delved into their
work, the stronger became my desire to bring before the American reader
the range and variety of the poetic voices that have emerged during
the last forty years or so. Religious or secular, Ashkenazi or Sephardic,
immigrant or native-born, they all participate in, and explore, sometimes
giddily, a new dynamic and excitement that reect the freedom and
ability to speak entirely new phrases, in the words of Agi Mishol
(p. 217). What attracted me most was the directness and vigor of their
speech. The poems are urgent, accomplished, and accessible, and I have
tried to select those poets who best represent the variety and richness
of contemporary Hebrew poetry.
I want to thank Aminadav Dykman for his concise and illuminating
Introduction, in which he provides the necessary historical foundation,
masterfully interweaving the story of the birth of Israel with the story
of its poetry, while demonstrating how Hebrew poetry evolved into
what it is today.
Finally, I had the privilege to work closely with the poets, except
for those no longer living at the time of translationYona Wallach
(1985) and Dan Pagis (1986). Over the intervening years, we lost
T. Carmi (1994), David Avidan (1995),Yehuda Amichai (2000), and Dahlia
Ravikovitch (2005). This anthology is dedicated to their memory.
Tsipi Keller
P R EFACE
xix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of the poems previously have appeared in the following journals
and anthologies: The New Republic; BOMB Magazine; Seneca Review;
Partisan Review; The Kenyon Review; Prairie Schooner; The Asian Pacic
American Journal; World Literature Today; Modern Hebrew Literature; ACM;
Poetry International; MidAir Magazine; Visions International; The Cream City
Review; The Jerusalem Review; Confrontation; Spoon River Review; Art Speak;
The Quarterly Review of Literature; Modern Poetry in Translation; The Vintage
Book of Contemporary World Poetry; Deant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems
from Antiquity to the Present; Dreaming the Actual: Contemporary Fiction and
Poetry by Israeli Women Writers; Circumference; Columbia; Connecticut Review;
The Caf Review; CipherJournal; Florida English; Guernica; Absinthe; InterPoezia; Zeek; Language for a New Century; Mad Hatters Review; American
Poetry Review; Smartish Pace.
Several poems also have appeared in the 1999 Mishkenot Shaananim
International Poets Festival Anthology (Jerusalem).
All rights for original works are held by each one of the poets or
their representatives. Published by arrangement with The Institute for the
Translation of Hebrew Literature. Special thanks go to the dedicated
staff of the Institute.
This project was made possible, in part, by a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.
Agi Mishols poems Revelation, Nocturnal I, Shaheeda,
from Look There (2006), reprinted in my translation with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota.
xxi
INTRODUCTION
What is so unique about Hebrew poetry? Why would a poetry reader

be interested in a selection of Israeli poets? Partially, at least, such
questions remain rhetorical: Israel has always elicited great curiosity
and polarized emotions, and it is safe to assume that its poetry would
as well. Poetry, W. H. Auden said, makes nothing happen. Perhaps.
But poetry, whether engaged or not, best represents the culture out
of which it has grown. In addition, Israeli poetry has its own unique
characteristics, just as the culture of which it is part. Vladislav Khodasevich, a Russian poet of this century, who was especially liked by
Nabokov, wrote a poem that opens:
I am the beginning, I am the end:
Ive done so little!
And still Im a solid link:
this blessing has been granted me.
One extraordinary feature of Israeli poetry is the length of the chain
in which a poet may feel as a solid link. In fact, it will not be erroneous to state that one line, contorted as it may be, connects every
Hebrew poet to the poetry of the Bible. In other words, the poetry of
which Israeli poetry is part is possibly more ancient than most poetic
traditions of our time. Russian poetry, for instance, is, at the most, 350
years old, and if we explore its roots, back to the twelfth centurys
The Tale of Igors Campaign, we would be at a moment when Hebrew
poetry was already in the middle age of the golden era. When an
Israeli poet such as Yehuda Amichai writes a poem to Yehuda Halevi
(The soft hair on his neck / the roots of his eyes. // His curling
beard- / the progression of his dreams), he writes about a poet from
xxiii
a golden era that was over before other golden eras emerged. When
a poet such as Dan Pagis writes a poem about King SaulSauls Last
Prayer(God, as the herd in the meadow / I was strong among
your stones / Enduring the burden of your thunder), he writes in a
tongue whose vocabulary, to a great extent, is still the vocabulary of
the poems biblical hero. True, there is a great distance between biblical
Hebrew and the Hebrew spoken today, but not as great as the distance
separating Yves Bonnefoy from, say, Chrestien de Troyes.
At the same time, contemporary Hebrew poetry, in many respects,
is younger than other contemporary poetry, perhaps, in some measure,
precisely because of its antiquityfor many generations, this poetry,
just like the tongue in which it is written, languished in a sort of
private purgatorio, not of death exactly, but not of a full life either, as
it did not participate as an equal in European poetry where it lived.
Many of the literary trends, such as classicism, symbolism, or modernism, entered Hebrew poetry late, and in strangely twisted ways. In the
summer of 1910, in a small resort town near Odessa, Haim Nachman
Bialik, the modern Jewish National Poet, wrote his famous confessional
poem Facing the Bookcase:
Do you still remember?I have not forgotten
In an attic, in a deserted synagogue,
I was the last of the last,
On my lips an ancient prayer lingered and died.
----------------------------------I look, I seeand yet I do not recognize you, old books,
From your letters clear eyes no longer
Gaze into depths of the soul,
The sad eyes of ancient elders [. . .]
----------------------------------Is it that my eyes grew dim,
Or are you nothing but rot, eternally dead [. . .]
The speaker of this poem, like S.Y. Agnons protagonists, is split between his painful longing for the old, tradition-based Jewish world and
between the new ways of the modern world. A few months earlier
that year, Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti printed in Le Figaro
xxiv
PO E TS O N THE E D GE
the rst Futurist manifesto: 1. We wish to praise the love of danger,

the habit of energy and effrontery. 2. Recklessness, daring and revolt
will be the components of our poetry [. . .]. Modernism, in fact, did
penetrate Hebrew poetry rather soon, about a decade later. But the
juxtaposition of the texts just quoted helps, I think, to appreciate what
enormous distances Hebrew poetry had to traverse in order to enter
the twentieth century.
Many aspects of the new history of Judaism and Israel, especially
after the rise of Zionism, have often been described in military terms:
the battle of languages (Hebrew and its rivalsthe Hebrew of the
Diaspora, Yiddish, German, and Russian); the conquest of the land (Palestine-Israel); the conquest of Hebrew labor; the conquest of the desert.
To state that each poetry is engaged in a ght to formulate
the language it needs will be a truism. But again, in Hebrew poetry,
the battle, one might say, was heroic and on an exceptional scale. At
the beginning of the last century, Hebrew poets still referred to their
language with messianic aspirations, as to a living dead, and they often
depicted it as the mourning daughter of Zion, using language reminiscent of The Book of Lamentations:
Be consoled, thou holy Hebrew tongue,
Your light shall shine still, your glory shall return,
Let not all your lovers despair;
The people of Israel, longing for you,
Shall rise again, as a warrior in the eld of battle,
Once your poets will start singing [. . .]
Surely the reader will have noticed the mode of distant hope that runs
throughout this stanza. Looking back 100 or 150 years, an American
reader sees poets such as Tennyson and Browning, Poe and Whitman,
and she or he cannot quite imagine poets who did not have in their
language a word for orange or cricket, poets who had to consult
the Bible and the Talmud to decide what might be the equivalent for
insomnia. The struggle to revive Hebrew, umbilically bound to the
greater struggle to revive the Jewish nation in its home, triumphed
against all odds. In 1928, when the battle over Hebrew still raged, poet
David Shimoni depicted the reviving language, using the well-known
metaphor of the phoenix:
IN T RODUCT ION
xxv
Spread your wing, wonder-bird, Hebrew idiom! Shake

your wings and y!
Fly to the end of earth, onto the depths of the ruined
Diaspora,
And where the wind had not yet uprooted the tents of
Jacob,
Awake the wondrous melody, the song of the everlasting
gospel!
The song of the everlasting gospel! For the ashes are not
yet cold,
And you will rise from your ashes, from the all-consuming
res [. . .]
As late as the 1940s, this struggle had not been clearly decided, and a
battle was yet to be waged for a live, spoken Hebrew. Most of the poets
of that periodAvraham Shlonsky, Leah Goldberg, Natan Altermanfelt
a strong kinship with Central Europe, and with Russia in particular.
Their poetry, for the most part, was rhymed and metered, written in a
Hebrew that resorted to a wide use of biblical vocabulary and diction.
Consider, for instance, the following stanzas by Shlonsky:
Halbishini, ima kshreh, ketonet pasim le-tiferet
ve-im shakhar hovilini eley amal.
Otfah artsi or ka-talit,
Batim nitsvu ka-totafot,
vekhi-retsu ot tellin golshim kevishim, salelu kappayim [. . .]
Dress me, good mother, in a glorious robe of many
colours,
and at the dawn lead me to [my] toil.
My land is wrapped in light as in a prayer shawl.
The houses stand forth like frontlets;
and the hand-paved roads stream down like phylactery
straps.
(Tr. T. Carmi)
xxvi
The imagery here is clearly modernistic, almost la Chagall, but the

wording is unmistakably biblical. The forms halbishini and hovilini, the
secondary, rare form otfah, and the use of the perfect in the verb nitsvu
(modern Israeli Hebrew would use the participle nitsavim) all clearly
belong to biblical Hebrew. This linguistic usage was by no means
limited to Shlonskys poetry. In fact, it was the poetic lingua franca
of that age.
Israeli linguist H. B. Rosen, who published a pioneering book
in 1956, under the self-explanatory title Our Hebrew, dedicated several
pages of his work to a meticulous analysis of one poem by a young
poet of the time, written in this very idiom, with its strong afliation
to the language of the Scriptures. Rosen composed a short philological commentary, where he noted the poets use of several biblical
and talmudic hapax legomena, and he concluded that he can gloss the
poem but cannot understand it. Writing as a linguist, not as a literary
scholar, Rosen stated that the poem, relying heavily on words that
are so far removed from the everyday conventional language of the
socium in which it was written, became incomprehensible, at least as
far as the users of that conventional language (i.e., Israeli Hebrew)
were concerned.
What was felt by the linguist was felt even more acutely by the
poets themselves. In the early 1950s, the young generation of poets
in the new stateonly a few years oldfelt that the poetic diction
developed by their predecessors no longer suited their experiences;
their emotional and intellectual makeup was radically different. In 1951,
Benjamin Harshav, who in time became a leading scholar of poetry,
was one of the founders of Likrat (Toward), a group that included
young poets who later became household names: Arieh Sivan, Natan
Zach, Moshe Dor,Yehuda Amichai, and David Avidan. Likrat, Harshav
wrote not too long ago, shifted Hebrew verse overnight from the
bathos and exuberant imagery of the Russian tradition to the irony
and understatements of Anglo-Saxon modernist poetry. [. . .] Whereas
the dominant Hebrew poets [. . .] were still steeped in the language of
the Bible and even used biblical tenses, the poets of Likrat wrote their
poetry as a matter of course in the spoken language of the new Israeli
society, with its European syntactic system, and the basic three tenses:
past, present, future, accommodating allusions to the Bible within the
framework of the spoken discourse.
IN T RODU CT ION
xxvii
One of the famous milestones in this process of change and

liberation was Natan Zachs direct mutiny against Alterman and Shlonsky, a mutiny that openly challenged the poetics of the dominant
poets of the time. In a book of collected essays, Time and Rhythm in
Bergson and Modern Poetry (1966), Zach criticized the stagy diction of
Shlonsky and Alterman and compared them to the mannerists of the
seventeenth century. He demonstrated how empty, in his view, was the
metric monotone of Shlonsky, and he stated that Altermans poetry, the
greatest charmer of them all, was better suited to the small stage rather
than serious poetry. In one chapter in his book, Zach called attention
to a poet close to his heart, David Fogel, who wrote in the 1920s and
1930s and had a strong afnity for German expressionism.
Even a casual glance at some of the poems by Zach, Amichai, or
Avidan should sufce to convince the reader that these poets indeed
forged a new poetic idiom, expressed in a language totally different from
that of their predecessors. Above all, this idiom involved a complete,
conscious rejection of the highest register of the Hebrew lexicon. Words
that occupied a central position in the poetic vocabulary of the preceding generation were now excluded or marginalized. Yehudah Amichai,
to quote but a representative example, made a clear statement to that
effect in one of his earlier poems: I, using but a small portion / of
the words in the dictionary. In other cases, this higher register was
used by the poets of the new generation as a point of departure toward
something quite different, usually closer to irony and understatement.
As in all similar cases, the move away from a lofty style entailed radical
changes in the status of tropes. These were now used in a very different
manner, almost diametrically opposed to the practice of the older poets.
In a nutshell, one might say that the poets of the new wave elaborated
the various techniques of hushing ones voice, of bringing it as close
as possible to the vernacular; hyperbole gave way to irony.
For Hebrew poetry, the conquest of place was just as important
as the conquest of language. For many generations, Jews experienced
the mystic connection to their lost landwhich became a spiritual
landthrough an imagined geography. This imagined geography was
the driving force of the famous Ode to Zion by Yehuda Halevi from
which one never tires to quote:
I would pass into thy forest and thy fruitful eld, and stand
Within thy Gilead, and wonder at thy mount beyond
xxviii
Mount Abarim, and Mount Hot, where are the twain

Great lightsthy Luminaries, thy Teachers.
---------------------------------------------Sweet would it be unto my soul to walk naked and barefoot
Upon the desolate ruins where thy holiest dwellings were;
In the place of thine Ark where it is hidden, and in the
place
Of thy cherubim which abode in thine innermost
recesses [. . .]
(Tr. Nina Salman)
It would be only natural to assume that once Jews returned to the
physical domain of Palestine, the imaginary and the physical entities
would fuse harmoniously, but in reality this harmony took quite a
long time to achieve and had to be fought for as well.
In 1903, Abraham-Moses Luntz, a pioneer of Hebrew publishing
in Jerusalem, printed a small anthology of poems, which later became
very popular: Zions Zither: Fifty Popular and National Poems Sung
Nowadays in the Cities and Colonies of the Holy Land. On page
39 of this booklet, Lunz printed a naive poem by one Y. Davidovich,
under the title A Wreath of Flowers:
I will set foot to the South, to the Land of Wonders,
And come to the awesome, beautiful Lebanon
A few mighty cedars still stand there,
I will pluck some of their leaves for you,
I will stride down to Bethlehem, to its elds
A boy still sings there his wondrous songs,
David the shepherd, leading his fathers herd
There I shall gather for you a bouquet of mandrakes.
I will then come to the gardens of the Mount of
Olives
Fresh leaves of the olive tree I shall take for you;
I will come to the fair Sharon Valley,
There, my pretty one, lilies shall I gather for you [. . .]
It is easy to see that, almost 1,000 years later, the very same imagined
geography that moved Yehudah Halevi was still very much active: on
IN T RODU CT ION
xxix
the slopes of the Lebanon Mountains and in the Sharon Valley, the
poet expects to nd the traditional biblical ora, and in the plains
of Bethlehem his inner ear still hears the song of King David; from
there he ventures to bring to his girl mandrakes, a plant nobody could
identify with any certainty in the real Palestine of 1903.
Indeed, the encounter with the real land of Israel resulted, for
most poets, in a shock. Celebrated Israeli critic Dan Miron pointed
out that a shock of this kind must have shattered the great Hebrew
poet Saul Tchernichowsky (18751943); after settling in Palestine, in
1931, the poet experienced a deep writers block, broken by a single
poem, In an Hour of Gloom, where he wrote: Here you are, Zion,
with your ruined sanctuaries, / With the proud grandeur of your
desolation! / Where are you, my enchanting, glorious dream? / Dream
of my dreams, where are you? It took Tchernichowsky almost two
full years to produce his rst poem about Palestines real panorama;
the imagined geography lingered for a surprisingly long time. In an
overall view, this poetic traditional geography yielded some kind of a
double (if not triple) vision, which combined a real, immediate view
of the panorama with a visionary, transhistoric view, sometimes blended
with historio-sophic-spiritual vision. The result, in all cases, was a
persistent inability to see the real surroundings of the land of Israel.
It is easy to demonstrate this with almost any place poem written
in Palestine up to the middle of the 1940s. One example follows by
Shmuel Bass, a poet who belonged to the generation known as the
second aliyyah:
Gush Halav
At moonlight I ascended to the mountains of Gush Halav,
To look for the ancient mystery, frozen in the slopes.
Mount Atsmon in the Galilee is wrapped in fog,
The miracle of Johanans bravery shines there no more.
No more there the tumult of the horses of ancient hosts,
Night has unsheathed here the sword of silence.
Oh, Lord! A great shadow passed before me,
Leading an army of eeing uttering shadows!
xxx
Johanan! Johanan! I heard your voice

From the silence of rocksburned hearts
Tell me, wasnt it you, who passed here?
In the light of your dew-like footsteps,
Mysterious dreams of old are kindled here,
And your laughter dissolves: Youre too late . . . Too late . . .
It is quite obvious that the author does not, or is not willing to, see
the actual place at his feet. From the top of Mount Atsmon, one could
see, in a clear night, the majestic view of the Valley of Beit Netofa.
But the poet sees nothing of that view; instead, the eyes of his spirit
see a historical vision of the battle between the legions of Vespasian
and the tragically heroic men of John of Giscala (Gush Halav), in the
year 67 AD. Similar poems were written on virtually every site in
Israel. This is not to say that there were no poems in which the real
view of the land of Israel did emerge. But even those poems were, in
general, laden with a cumbersome ideological burden.
It is safe to state that as the spoken Hebrew of the living street
entered Hebrew poetry, so did the street itself. It seems that Hebrew
poetry had to wait for a generation for whom looking at a place, in
the here and now, would be part of its poetics. For Israeli author Dan
Tsalka, writing about Amichais poetry in 1962, it was immediately
apparent that the landscape Amichai usually writes about is a new
one, unknown in our lyric poetry [. . .] In Amichais poems, jets crowd
the skies, cars caress the roads, tanks travel [. . .].
This opening toward a real place, an actual landscape, grew and
widened, making room for strong, physical poems by the new generation of poets discussed here. Had this development not taken place,
one could hardly imagine how a poem such as Meir Wieseltiers A
Naive Painting (p. 130) could have been written:
A world is created in the shape
of a backyard in the South of Tel Aviv.1
A tired eucalyptus represents the third day,
a hungry cat, the fth.
1. A mostly impoverished area in Tel Aviv.
IN T RODU CT ION
xxxi
The Almighty on the right in the image of an old

Bucharan man in clean underwear,
addressing the virgin Daughter of Israel,
a Yemenite girl of fteen with a tape-cassette
on the terrace across the street.
He says: Wont you turn off the music
on the day the Temple was destroyed?
The Ninth of Av is a mourning day for the Jews
since time immemorial.
And what does Yemima say?
She doesnt say.
She turns up the volume.
As this poem clearly shows, the possibility of looking straight into an
actual courtyard, in a physical city, did not mean that the turn away
from the historical past resulted in a one-dimensional, myopic poetic
vision. Not at all. But here, too, Hebrew poetry had to negotiate a
long path before it reached that which seems quite natural to an
English-speaking reader.
The last conquest that has to be discussed here (and perhaps
I should have reversed the order) is the conquest of the self. Of
the twenty-seven poets presented here, almost half are women, and
the fact that there are many Israeli women poets writing today
is irrefutable.
Again, in order to appreciate the full meaning of this literary fact,
one might cast ones eye back in time. At a time when English poetry
had such poets as Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Emily Dickinson,
themselves late heiresses of a long tradition, Hebrew poetry had but a
single woman poet, Rechel Morpurgo, of Trieste, whose very existence
struck the Hebrew men of letters of her generation (mid-nineteenth
century) as something short of a miracle. She herself was well aware of
her transgression in aspiring to write poetry: I look to the North,
South, East and West: / Women are ckle-minded, thats why theyre
vain. / A few years past, why should any city / Be remembered more
than a dead dog? / Wanderer and city-man alike declare: / The distaff
is the only art t for a woman.
It was only with the new wind brought by the Zionist endeavor
that women took their place in Hebrew poetry. In the words of Yael
xxxii
Feldman, a scholar of feminist Hebrew literature, [At] the turn of

the last century [. . .] Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, the propagator of spoken
Hebrew, invited women to revive this old, forgotten, hard and dry
language with their emotion and tenderness, suppleness and subtlety.
[. . .] One hundred years later, Hebrew is in no need of special care, and
women poets infuse it with a range of emotions and reections [. . .]
as betting any creative endeavor in any language by any gender.
Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the conquest of the self
in Hebrew poetry meant only that it was liberated so as to allow
womens poetry, or homoerotic poems. The tone givers in Hebrew
poetry of previous generations adopted the self of prophet-poet, the self
of a titanic, public persona, an Atlas-like gure, bearing an enormous
weight of national responsibility. A juxtaposition of poems might help
demonstrate the dimensions of this titanic poetic persona. When HaimNachman Bialik, the National Poet, passed away in 1934, there gushed
a ood of commemorative poetry. In these poems the dead bard often
was hailed as a prophet, or as the Tree of the World, whose roots
nurtured the entire nation and its literature. The poet Ezra Zussman
wrote a poem titled The Poets Lecture:
He came, as if returning from an expedition
To the North Pole: wintry and panting,
In a heavy coat, a scarf around his neck
Crossing the stage as a light-footed youth.
And he walked to and fro on the stage
(Many feared lest he return no more)
Spitting words like metal splinters,
His hands full of enchantment.
And he was greater than any dispute
Over theatre or plays that night,
When spirit and matter together
Staged the greatest play of them all [. . .]
Readers familiar with twentieth-century Russian poetry may remember the following passage from Boris Pasternaks poem A
Sublime Malady:
IN T RODU CT ION
xxxiii
How should I nish this fragment?

I remember his turn of phrase
That struck me with a white ame
Like a whiplash of lighting bolts.
The audience rose and with squinting eyes,
Scanned the far table
When he grew unto the platform,
Grew before he reached the stage.
----------------------------------------He waslike the thrust of a rapier.
Chasing the stream of his talk
He thumbed his vest, planted his heel.
And hammered his point home.
(Tr. Mark Rudman and Bohdan Boychuk)
Bearing in mind that Pasternaks lines relate a recollection of his presence at one of the public appearances of V. I. Lenin, the reader can
imagine the scope of the poetic persona in Hebrew poetry of that
time. Grosso modo, this was the scale: a poet-Isaiah, a poet-Lenin. Two
generations later, the poets of the so-called Palmach-generation2 still
made use of a very similar public poetic persona (characteristically in
the early poetry of Haim Gouri).
The emergence of the poets of the new generation changed all
that in a most radical fashion. To be sure, several of the poets of that
generation, and of the generations that followed, still displayed various
titanic selves, but of a very different sort. Risking a certain platitude,
I would say that this new poetic self, grand as it might be, no longer
bore the responsibilities of the nation. In this context, it is enough to
mention the fact that the title of the second collection of poems of
David Avidana central gure for the new generationwas Personal
Problems (emphasis added). Naturally, this narrowing down of the
poetic self harmonized well with the move toward a less grandiose
and lofty poetic vernacular, and with the desire to feel less burdened
by history and more at home in ones habitat.
In an anthology whose title includes the word contemporary,
it is tting, I think, not only to investigate the past and the roots
2. So named after the paramilitary organization to which many of the poets belonged
during the Independence War of 1948.
xxxiv
of the contemporary object presented here but also to reect for a

moment on its possible future. No doubt, most of the poets selected
here will take part in the future of Hebrew poetry, and one can only
hope that, thanks to this anthology, American readers will become
acquainted with a poetry that will enrich them and encourage them
to continue to follow it.
To conclude, let me quote in full Dan Pagiss poem A Linguistic
Problem (p. 28):
The maiden we call Hebrew
is the youngest born in a very good family.
Her problem, though: she messes around.
Every day its another story.
You cant rely on her,
her word carries no weight.
Shes not even pretty:
shes got acne, large feet,
is loud and stubborn as a mule.
And whats worse:
she wont give in to those
who want to stie her unruly voice
and bury her, respectfully,
in the ancestral tomb.
Aminadav Dykman
(Essay translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller)
IN T RODUCT ION
xxxv
YEHUDA AMICHAI
(19242000)
Yehuda Amichai was born into an orthodox family in Wurzburg,

Germany, and arrived in Israel in 1936. He studied at Hebrew
University and later taught at various schools and colleges,
including the Greenberg Institute, the University of California at
Berkeley, and New York University. He published fteen volumes
of poetry, two novels, short stories and plays, and his work has
been translated into thirty-three languages. His many awards
include the Shlonsky Award, the Brenner Award, the Bialik
Award, the Wrzburgs Award for Culture, the Israel Award, the
Agnon Award, the French Malraux Award, the Literary Lion
Award, Macedonias Golden Wreath Award, the Norwegian
Bjornson Poetry Award, and an Honor Citation from Assiut
University, Egypt. The poems appearing here are from his 1998
collection Open Shut Open.
I Was Not One of the Six Million.

And What Is the Span of My Life?
Open Shut Open
1.
I was not one of the six million
who died in the Holocaust, not even
one of those who survived, and I was not one
of the six hundred thousand who came out of Egypt,
I, for one, reached the Promised Land from the sea.
I was not among all those others but the smoke and re
did linger in me, and columns of re and columns of smoke1
still show me the way night and day, and the frantic search
for emergency exits and soft spots still lingers as well.
After the stripped earth, to ee into weakness
and into hope, and there lingered in me the lust to search
for spring water, to speak softly to the rock and to smite it.2
Later a silence of no questions, no answers.
Like millstones Jewish history and world history
grind me between them, at times down to dust,
and a solar year and a lunar year precede
one another or follow one another and leap
and provide constant motion to my life
and I at times fall in the gap between them
to hide in or to sink.
2.
I was not in the places where I was not
and will not be. I have no part in the innite
of light years and dark years but the darkness is mine
and the light is mine and my time is mine.
The sand on the shore, the innite grains,
is the sand upon which I loved in Achziv and in Caesarea.
The years of my life I broke down into hours
and the hours into minutes and into seconds
and milliseconds. They are the stars above
that cannot be numbered.
3.
And what is the span of my life. I am like one
who has come out of Egypt and the Red Sea parted and I walked
on dry land, on my left and on my right two walls of water,
behind me Pharaoh and his army and horsemen,
1. Alludes to Exodus 13, verse 21. The biblical Hebrew amud is traditionally translated as pillar, but here, in the context of the Holocaust, I chose column, alluding
to the columns of human beings, reduced to numbers, and who were the fodder of
the smoke and re.
2. Alludes to Moses striking the rock for water (Ex. 17, 6).
before me the desert, perhaps the Promised Land.

This is the span of my life.
4.
Open shut open. Before a man is born
all in the universe is open without him.
While he lives, all is shut within him.
And when he dies, all is open again.
Open shut open. This is what man is.
5.
And what is the span of my life, as in a self-portrait,
I set the camera at a distance on solid ground
(the only solid place on earth),
decide on a spot where to stand, near a tree,
and run back to the camera and press the button
and run back to my place near the tree,
listen to the ticking of time, its hum like a distant prayer,
and the popping sound, like an execution.
This is the span of my life. God develops the picture
in His great darkroom. Heres the picture:
white hair on my head, the eyes heavy and weary,
and the brows above my eyes black, like sooty
window-frames of a burned-down house.
The years of my life have passed.
6.
My life is the gardener of my body. The brain
a well-secured hothouse, replete with owers and strange
exotic plants of great sensitivity and extinction fears.
The face a French garden laid out in exact planes
with marble-tiled squares and statues and places to rest,
and places to touch and sniff and gaze, to get lost
in a green maze and paths, not to trample, not to pluck.
The torso above the navel an English park displaying freedom
with no angles, no tiles, a facsimile of nature and man,
in our image,3 our likeness,
3. Alludes to Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness (Gen. 1, 26).
YEHU DA A M ICH A I
its arms joining the great night all around.

And my lower body below the navel at times a feral,
striking, wondrous nature preserve, preserved and not preserved,
at times a compact Japanese garden, mapped out in advance.
The genitals honed and smooth stones with dark tufts
between them and distinct lanes full of meaning
and calm contemplation. And my fathers precepts
and my mothers commandments are the chirp and song of birds.
And the woman I love is the seasons and the weathers
and the children playing are my children.
And the life is my life.
7.
I wholly believe that right at this moment
millions of people are standing at crossroads,
at street corners, in deserts and jungles,
and direct one another as to where to turn,
and which is the road, the path,
and explain again where to turn, which way,
and how to get there taking the fastest route,
and where to stop and ask someone else.
There, there. No, at the second corner,
then make a left, or a right, near the white house,
at the oak tree, and they elaborate, with excited voices,
waving their hands, shaking their heads,
there, there, no, not this there, that there,
as if taking part in a primal ritual. This, too, is a new religion.
I wholly believe that right at this moment.
The Precision of Pain and the Blurring of Bliss

A Touch of Yearning in Everything4
In my garden I saw jasmine blossoms swept
in an autumnal wind and clinging to a bougainvillea bush.
Oh, what a blunder, what a waste, what a senseless loss.
4. This is one section (third) of a twenty-one-section poem.
I saw a sun dip in the sea, I saw God.

What blunder, what hope!
I saw two birds trapped in the domed terminal in the airport,
ying desperately above the commotion below.
Oh, what a blunder, what a ight, what desperate love,
what an out without an out, what a vision of hallowed wings!
A plane circled above it all, calling:
Im trying, Im trying again.
Try, they tell him from the control tower.
Try again, try again.
My Parents Motel
1.
I went past the cemetery where my parents are buried.
In his poem Ibn Ezra called it: My Parents Motel.
I didnt go in, I just went down the road outside the wall.
I wave to them as I pass, my soul made into a hand,
my soul changing forms, sometimes as my hair in the wind,
sometimes as my aching feet while they walk
or happily hop, and sometimes as my eyes, sometimes as my lids,
and sometimes even my lashes are my soul.
Greetings to my parents, greetings to their dust,
greetings to their motel in Jerusalem!
2.
With much love my parents spared me aches disappointments
and sorrows. Now all of these are deposited in me
as in any savings account to which is added the pain
I wish to spare my children.
What a great savings account collects in me.
Even they always said to me: Ill show you yet,
at times in a threatening voice,
at times in a voice of sweet love.
Ill show you yet. Wait, Ill show you.
Youll see, in anger, Youll see,
YEHU DA A M ICH A I
in a soothing, promising voice.

Do whatever you like, shouting,
and Do whatever you like, youre a free person,
as in a chant of benevolent angels.
You yourself dont know what you want,
you yourself dont know what you want.
3.
My mother was a prophet and didnt know it.
Not like Miriam the Prophetess who danced with drums and chimes,
not like Deborah who sat under a palm tree and judged the people,
not like Hulda the Prophetess who told the future,
but my own private prophet, quiet and stubborn,
and I must do as she commanded and the time of my life is passing.
My mother was a prophet when she told me the everyday things,
verses for one-time use: Youll be sorry;
It will make you tired; It will make you feel good;
Youll feel like new; Youll like it; You wont be able to;
You wont like it; You cant close it;
I knew you wouldnt remember; Dont forget;
Give; Take; Rest; You can, you cannot.5
When my mother died all the little prophecies combined into
a great one to last till the end of days.
4.
My father was God and didnt know it. He gave me
the Ten Commandments not in thunder and rage,
not in re or cloud, but with softness and love.
And he added gestures and good words,
added, Please and Welcome and intoned Remember and Keep
in one incantation, and pleaded and wept
between one commandment and the next.
5. In the original manuscript pages Amichai had given me, before the book appeared
in Hebrew, the line read, You can, you cannot. In the book, the line reads, You
can, you can. It is possible that Amichai revised the line; it also is possible that it is
a misprint, and the same for the stanza break after this line: in the ms. pages, there
is a stanza break; in the nal book, there is no stanza break.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,
Thou shalt not take, in vain, please,
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
And he held me tight and whispered in my ear,
Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not kill. And he placed his open palms on my head
in the Yom Kippur benediction, Honor,6 love,
so that thy days may be long upon the land.
And my fathers voice is as white as his hair.
Then he turned his face to me for the last time
as he did on the day he died in my arms and said:
I want to add two to the Ten Commandments:
The eleventh commandment, You will not change
and the twelfth commandment, Change, you will change.
So said my father and turned from me and went
and vanished into his mysterious distances.
The Jewish Time Bomb

On my desk stands a stone the word amen engraved in it,
one fragment, a survivor of thousands of fragments of broken
tombstones in Jewish cemeteries. And I know that all these fragments
now cram the great Jewish time bomb, together with other
fragments and shards, fragments of the Covenant Tablets,
fragments of altars and crosses, rusty crucixion nails
with household fragments and holy fragments and bone fragments,
and shoes and glasses and articial limbs and false teeth
and empty tin cans of Exterminator poison. All of these
charge the Jewish time bomb until the end of days,
and even though Im aware of this and of the end of days
this stone on my desk calms me,
a stone of truth that no one would want,
a stone wiser than a philosophers stone,
a stone of a broken tombstone,
6. In full, Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land
(Exodus 20, 26).
YEHU DA A M ICH A I
more whole than any perfection,

a testimonial stone of all that ever was,
of all that ever will be, a stone of amen and love.
Amen, amen, and may it be Thy will.
T. CARMI
(19251994)
T. Carmi was born in New York City to a Hebrew-speaking

family, and his rst Hebrew poems were published while
he still lived in the United States. He studied at Yeshiva and
Columbia universities, and in 1946 he worked with Jewish war
orphans in France, before settling in Israel in 1947. He taught
at Brandeis, Oxford, and Stanford and was poet-in-residence
at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He published fteen volumes
of poetry as well as plays he translated into Hebrew, including
A Midsummer Nights Dream, Measure for Measure, and Hamlet.
His awards include the Shlonsky Award, the Brenner Award,
the Bialik Award, and the Prime Minister Award, as well as the
1982 Irving and Bertha Neuman Literary Award, and the 1982
Kenneth B. Smilen Present Tense Literary Award for the Penguin
Book of Hebrew Verse, which he edited and translated. His poems
were translated into twenty languages, and collections of his
work were published in the United States and in Europe. Since
1978 until his death, Carmi had been visiting professor at the
Jerusalem Hebrew Union College. The poems appearing here
are from his collections Monologues and Other Poems (1988) and
Truth & Consequence (1993), and these translations were
dedicated by the poet to his son Michael.
And Until When?

Words of darkness, hot as wax.
I swear on my life, yours,
on my head, yours, on this hand,

and under my thigh.
Words of darkness. A scorching tear
from your eyes
burns on my forehead
like a third eye.
Weve drawn a covenant, hot as wax.
Until the moon is no more? Until dawn?
Until the warmth of the groin fades?
Words of darkness, hot as wax.
The glow of one esh,
a memorial candle
to the memory of a aming breath.
If It So Pleases
The greater the bondthe greater the distance.
Mouth to whispering mouth, eye to eye.
And all at onceno eyes, only void, only
sealed lips, a deaf asp; and from where
the courage to see again,
to recall the melting sweat,
the welding dawn; the strength
to clearly say: Forgive me,
I dont understand what stung
from out of my eye, which is your eye.
I dont understand what fouled
the breath of my mouth, which is your breath;
10
and how the two who were one,

man in woman, woman in man,
now face each other, faceless
a hard, blazing malevolence?
And what happens to memoryobliterated?
Does it dissolve, like dew, in the heat?
Does it pretend to be dead
like a naked vine in December?
Above me, a sliver of moon:
after-death or news of a return?
I dont know. If it so pleases, perhaps
the greater the distancethe greater the bond.
Nightwatch
Even in sleep, you ll the rooms.
The Persian rug, twisted, serpentine,
knows youre sleeping in the next room,
in your white gown, the sleep of the just.
Your head on my shoulder tells me
Im free to think whatever I wish,
and my wish, thanks to you, is good.
Ill sit here by your bed,
not sleeping, not dozing
(like the hum of the refrigerator)
and shoo away mosquitoes.
The big stinger
shoos away the small ones.
Your blood is on my head.
T. CA R M I
11
A Time for Everything

1.
Solomons Egyptian7
inamed his head with sorcery,
spreading over his bed
a canopy of stars and planets.
The wisest of all men.
Turned his days into nights.
2.
When the sun rose
my sorceress drew the curtains.
And I, naturally, saw stars.
The room blazed
and she switched on the fan.
The wisest of all men
never heard such an ocean!
3.
Time stood in the doorway,
biding, his satchel overowing
with court notices,
eviction and oblivion.
But their rustle, like light foam,
blended in the roar of the ocean.
4.
He was not upset.
He knew it was only a matter of time.
Sooner or later, a faint hand will emerge
from the waves of darkness
the fan will be silenced
and we will be parched.
7. The poem alludes to the midrashic legend that Solomons wife, Pharaohs daughter, spread above his bed a tapestry cover studded with diamonds and pearls which
gleamed and glittered like constellations in the sky. Whenever Solomon wanted to rise,
he saw these stars, and thinking it was night still, he slept on (L. Ginzberg, Legends
of the Jews, vol. IV, pp. 12829).
12
5.
On the shelf, at the head of the bed,
side by side, our
wrist watches are tense
like crabs on the beach.
Monologue of the Deserted (II)

When the day comes, father of my child,
I wont be able to sit Shiva for you.
(Once, when I sat on you,
you were in seventh heaven.)
I wont be able to shed a tear
over your letters.
(The source has long dried up
both in the eye above
and the eye below.)
I wont be able to lie prostrate
on the heaps of photographs,
carry you in my lap like a nursling,
diaper your memory,
pick up the toys
it tosses to the oor.
Youve torn your life from my hands
and also your death.
I once desired your life,
now (vainly)
your death.
In Memory of Dan Pagis (19301986)

1.
The future, Dan said on the telephone, about two weeks after
surgery, about a month before he died, doesnt look rosy.
T. CA R M I
13
And I thought: Only Dan could have placed these words on

his palette, mixed them cautiously and, with quick strokes,
touching-not-touching, brought to light the red and the white
hidden in the pink, the aborted future, and the past turning over
before his eyes.
2.
Could have. Could have. Could have.
He could have written. Could have said.
Could have remained silent.
Not to stray from the truth
(he couldnt have)
I must reiterate:
His person, nowthird person pronoun,
his timepast continuous.
3.
When the chill pierced his knees
in the heat of summer
he covered them with a blanket
like a stowaway
in a dim compartment.
Even his great lucidity
failed to disconnect
the chilling sparks that ashed
from knee to knee
emergency transmissions
between underground cells.
He had locked up the code
in his bent body.
For twenty years he forgot,
forgot, forgot.
And what he could not,
pierced under the blanket.
His high forehead
took no notice
14
of what happened at his feet.

His blue eyes did not betray
the cold throbbing in his kneecaps.
Did a re come out from hashmal 8
and consume his smile?
4.
He almost always hedged his words:
Perhaps . . . as well . . . although . . . yet . . .
Yet his perhaps was certainty
the distance of a pilot
who knows that he handles
supersonic instruments;
that precisely in such altitudes,
where he circles alone,
it is important to observe
ground rules.
5.
In normal times, I would show him these lines, and he would go
over them with a slow nger, like a mine detector, halting at a dangerous passage, suggesting an alternate path and leading, circuitously,
onto the right lane.
6.
Quick as a dragony,
clear as the reection of water,
radiant as a childs smile,
wary as an exacting scientist
implanting new hearts
in our ailing words.
8. The modern Hebrew word for electricity. It rst appears in the chariot vision in
Ezekiel, chapter 1, where it apparently refers to a supernatural glow. Hashmal was one
of the major subjects of early Hebrew mysticism.
T. CA R M I
15
7.
The words I havent told him
when he was alive.
The truth be told, I said very little.
(He, too, held back the words.)
I knew he knows his way among the stanzas,
that he infers the yes from the no,
sees the silence between the voices,
the rhyme inscribed in invisible ink;
I knew he remembers the meaning of forgetting,
extends a helping hand to the stumbling pun,
willing to pretend
the mask is the face.
8.
When a good friend dies
you lose something from your own reection.
From now on
youll always be wanting.
New York, 1986
Monologue in the Twilight of His Life

Without my noticing
the time has come.
I live my life in thirds:
one third at the gravesites of friends,
one third among the living
(in some measure or other),
one third at the plot
that eagerly awaits me.
Without my noticing
the time has come.
I lie to the dawn,
16
to my son, sleeping open-mouthed,

to her, half of my body,
who crosses the night.
I am all lies, lies,
dripping memories, smiles.
Without my noticing
the time has come,
following me, like a phantom.
We are two who are one.
I deceive everyone:
I speak in the singular,
purchase one ticket
on the bus.
Lonely Womans Monologue

The light above my door proclaims:
Open. Im home.
Waiting.
The bulb is exposed
a faint pulse in the waves of night,
emergency ashes of intensive care.
The bougainvillea vines interweave with the pine,
sprinkle crimson spots
on sealed acorns.
Now all sway in the wind:
the lamp, the night, the pine needles
that seek my veins.
The extinguished light above my door proclaims:
Im done waiting.
Ive come to the end.
T. CA R M I
17
Chess at the Seashore

A calm sea. The end of September.
Two old men play chess
at the seashore.
Like a hampered kite one hand
hovers above the board.
The pervading aroma of barbecue;
grilled meats on the shore.
A mechanical pigeon,
white as the mans bristles,
lands, exhausted,
on the warm sand.
The next move:
rewind the spring,
y the pigeon
before it gets dark;
take the Queen
with a drooping hand.
Dusk on the shore.
It is hard to tell
white from black.
Whose turn is it?
It is hard to master
the rules of the game.
An Explosion in Jerusalem
In the Garden of Independence
pigeons take to the air;
a hasty ight to antenna tops.
Their hearing is sharper.
18
Only after the utter has stopped

and the sky has cleared
I hear a distant explosion.
The cashier at the caf
is already waiting:
a practiced hand, a worn smile,
she hands me telephone tokens.
My wife is already waiting.
Her hearing is sharper.
All is well on our side:
she is home,
he is home;
who is home?
Who isnt home?
A strange garden,
a garden without wings,
but the patrons on the terrace
are not puzzled.
Through the glass I glimpse
dancing ngertips,
a hovering mouth,
quivering laughter.
I return to my seat.
And now, a rst pigeon in the garden.
1985
Mortication of the Soul

Yom Kippur on the Sabbath:
instead of shofar blows,
T. CA R M I
19
a gray tomcat shoves his horn

into a black tabby;
her complaint goes up to heaven
the tremulous wails of chastised infants;
his teeth fasten until she bleeds,
the army of his sperm
roars in her womb.
And the parched neighbor
who no longer remembers
when old age overtook her
stands in the window, shrieking:
Enough! Enough! Enough!
Ein Hod, 1990
The Mouth
The mouth that enthralled
is the mouth that appalls.
The mouth that lulled to sleep
is the mouth that awakens,
saying: Enough.
Your dream, like cobwebs,
sticks to my hands.
The mouth that sucked
the breath of your sleep
like a rescued man on the beach,
clenches like a st.
The mouth that aroused
is the mouth that numbs,
saying: With your permission,
these tears tenderize your esh,
to set the table for the feast of the dead.
20
The mouth that bound is the mouth that releases,9

saying: From now on youre permitted
to one and all.
From the Diary of a Divorc

1. Dream
My desk kept shrinking until the tiles underneath were exposed. My
dog kept spinning until it shed its fur. When a tongue of crimson
was all that remained, I begged for mercy and wakefulness.
In the morning, I kissed my sons forehead, stroked my wifes hair.
I went from room to room, nodding brightly at the carpets, the
window bars, the shelves, the cracks in the ceiling.
At last I entered my study. The desk is made of oak. It knows that
dreams speak falsehoods. I lean my weight upon it and write our
story. At my side is the dog, prick-eared, butand this is
unusualI cant see its eyes.
2. We Were Not Worthy
When husband and wife are worthy, Shekinah abides them; when they are
not worthy, re consumes them.10
We were not worthy.
A re consumes us.
The birds deserted the roof,
eeing the smoke.
The lizards ran for their lives.
9. A variant on the Talmudic ruling in nancial matters: The mouth that forbade
is the mouth that permitted (Ketuboth, II,2).
10. The quote is from the Talmud (Sotah, 7a). It is based on the following wordplay:
if the middle letter of the three-letter word for man and the last letter of the threeletter word for woman are omitted, then the remaining two letters yield the word
re. If the two letters that were omitted are joined together, then they form the
Divine Name (i.e., Shekinah abides them).
T. CA R M I
21
In the closeta rending.

The sleeve mourns the hand,
the collar laments the neck,
the hat weeps: My head.
Fire. Perpetual re.
3. The Last Day
On the day before my divorce, I went over to the house (my
house). I went past my neighbors, turned my key in the lock I had
installed only a few months before, and entered my home.
I thought I might light the parafn stove, as I do every winter. The
stove is old, rusting. The rings, warped in the heat of passing years,
disintegrate. The oil duct is blocked. Only I knew exactly where the
rags are, the kerosene, how to coax the switch of the thermostat.
But another had already lit the stove before I arrived. A tall, yellow
ame gargled in the tattered tank. Too bad. I wanted so much to
leave behind a neat, warm house, purring like a pampered cat.
4. Before Leaving
Before leaving my house (for the last time before my divorce), I
took with me a pomelo and an apple. I put them in a brown
plastic bag (the bags are stored in a net, to the right of the fridge)
and left. Coming down the stairs, I recalled how my son, before
leaving for school, would return and grab something to eat,
especially on days he expected a quiz. I turned back and took a
banana as well.
5. Another Dream
I went past her as if she were
a guard at the entrance
of a museum.
I dragged my feet
in the dim light
from exhibit to exhibit
gazing from afar, wondering up close.
22
Coming out, I didnt look

at her back.
Museum guards
do not have a back,
nor a face.
6. For the Time Being
For the time being
our slate is clean.
You did not follow me in the desert.
Another did,
and now her share is a stretch
of unsown land.
For the time being
I do not begrudge you.
But my happiness is a moon
that consumes itself
and its inhabitants.
T. CA R M I
23
DAN PAGIS
(19301986)
Dan Pagis was born in Bukovina, a German-speaking province

of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the war, in 1946, he
arrived in Israel, having spent three years in a concentration camp.
Pagis was professor of medieval Hebrew literature at Hebrew
University until his death. He published six volumes of poetry, a
childrens book, and studies on the aesthetics of medieval poetry.
A posthumous collection, Last Poems, was published in 1987, as
well as a Collected Poems in 1991. His work was translated into
Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, Greek,
Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, SerboCroatian, Swedish, Vietnamese, and Yiddish, and collections of his
poems were published in the United States, the United Kingdom,
Germany, and Spain. The poems appearing here are from his
collections Late Leisure (1964), Transformation (1970), Synonyms
(1982), and Last Poems (1987).
Tempt the Devil

When he faced the guillotine
Danton said: The verb to guillotine
(this new verb)
is limited in its tense
and pronoun conjugations,
for I will not have had the chance
to use the past tense and say:
I was guillotined.
A sharp and cutting sentence, but naive.
24
24
Take me (and really, Im nothing special).

I was beheaded
I was hanged
I was burnt
I was shot
I was butchered.
I was forgotten.
(I shouldnt tempt the devil;
he may yet recollect
that morally speaking, at least,
Im still ahead.)
Ein Leben
In the month of her death she stands
at the window, a young woman, her hair
done in a permanent, elegant wave.
In the brown photograph
she is pensive, looking out.
From the outside an afternoon cloud
of the year 34 looks at her, blurred,
out of focus, but always loyal.
From the inside I look at her,
a four-year old, or thereabout.
I seize my ball,
slowly exit the picture
and grow old, grow old,
cautiously, quietly,
so as not to startle her.
Wall Calendar
December. An arctic wind, new
and bitter. Angels and polar bears
DA N PAGIS
25
sink into their winter slumber.

Just then,
above, in the folds of soft snow,
the traps of spring get set.
June. In a military ceremony
lled with sunshine,
the man is buried at noon.
Just then,
it is midnight in the womans belly. The fetus
reports for duty: he recognizes the code.
December. Suddenly the boat
turns over, I drown in a squalid
sea, and watch, as expected,
just then,
all my stolen years drift by
like sweet water.
The End of Winter

With your charcoal eyes,
good snowman, you saw black,
only black. So much courage
in your eyes: not even a stir!
And in the middle the nose
still protrudes, the pessimistic
carrot. Be well, fellow,
and happy in your aging. It is true
that you and I, at the end of winter,
are a trie smaller, weaker,
but you and I know:
pretty were our days of winter
and so will be our summer.
Why wait for it in the backyard?
Lets sneak away from here right now,
before the muds of spring
26
ow gaily and rapidly down the street

and further out to the open sea,
if indeed it exists.
Tomorrow the radio will announce
that no trace of us will ever be found.
Memorial Night
On that memorial night for whats-his-name, that veteran poet,
I am in the audience in the Community Hall. Facing me, the
committee members are already seated on stage. A long narrow
table severs them in the middle; six lost faces on top, twelve lost
shoes below. The opener opens and says: Ladies and gentlemen,
good evening, thank you for coming. Please! Six porters come up
on stage, turn over the table and carefully pack in the committee
members, each member on his chair: a communal cofn. The
audience is already up on its feet, pushing and shoving toward the
exit, toward their cofns waiting outside. I, too, with my elbows and
sts, push my way out so as not to miss my turn.
*
You arrive slightly latea green felt hat, an elegant jackethigh
spirited, almost sprightly, and ask: So, shall we go? Do you know
the story about coming and going? I turn white, Im so
embarrassed, and you, noticing, hasten to end. Youve succumbed. In
no time you have wound yourself with white straps and are already
laid out, like a large caterpillar, not yet a buttery, on the lthy
stretcher of the Burial Society. And you state, indeed with some
hesitancy: All right, lets go. A slovenly man approaches me and
asks: Youre the son? Good. Thats the father? Good. He
covers you, and six men carry you away. I plod in their footsteps
on the dirt roadyour footsteps are already up in the air. Suddenly
the stretcher tilts over, and you oscillate between them, impatient
perhaps, or just clowning around. I reach with my hand to help, to
DA N PAGIS
27
halt, but they all shout in unison: No, no, and then politely
explain: You are the son, you are forbidden to touch.
A Linguistic Problem
The maiden we call Hebrew
is the youngest born in a very good family.
Her problem, though: she messes around.
Every day its another story.
You cant rely on her,
her word carries no weight.
Shes not even pretty:
shes got acne, large feet,
is loud and stubborn as a mule.
And whats worse:
she wont give in to those
who want to stie her unruly voice
and bury her, respectfully,
in the ancestral tomb.
Diagnosis
Day and night this shrieking in the ears,
a whistle in the radio between two rival stations,
an endless trilling. Maybe youve heard
about this terrible punishment,
the ea in Tituss nose.
But I am just a puny villain,
so why the noise?
Sir, its very interesting, but with you
it is a simple case of tinnitus,
in Hebrew: Tintun. A defect in the acoustic nerve.
Your nerve11 is awed, Sir.
11. In the Hebrew, nerve has the same derivation as sorrow, sadness.
28
You press it, and your hearing becomes acute.

Dogs can hear a high frequency,
superhuman, and you,
what you hear, it comes from you,
its inside you,
no other chirp here.
Anecdote
In an incidental train, at night, at Long-Island Intersection,
suddenly he sits opposite me, the witty poet
who died years ago
on a different continent.
Disguised as a passenger, hidden under the rim of his hat,
he nods his head as if agreeing with the journeys destination.
I glance at him, yet my gaze
is trapped in the holes of his eyes.
I say his name, but his name
strikes against the bar of his teeth,
and reverts back to mine.
And already the car stops, he rises,
pushes to the doorway,
disappears.
And so, even the great swordsman of speech
ends up with a mutter of, Pardon, Sir,
in a narrow dim doorway bearing the inscription:
Stop!
Have you forgotten something?
Testimony
No, no, they were denitely
human: uniforms, boots,
DA N PAGIS
29
how to say it. They were made

in the image.
I was a shadow.
I had a different maker.
And He in His grace hasnt left in me
anything that could perish.
And I ran to Him, I ascended,
light, bluish, reconciled,
Id say, apologetic:
smoke to almighty smoke
of no face or gure.
Browsing through the Album

Destined for greatness, hes sprawled on his belly,
sucks onward condently. The expanse of the oor
awaits him: it is all a target, he cannot miss.
And already he is big, photographed on his feet,
and forgets all that he will not learn.
Briey, he enters the class picture,
smiles up there, next to the teachers.
In the meantime, with a woman or two on the beach,
passing footprints in the sand. And so he rests,
grown and yellowing in a pensive photo,
a hand on his forehead; twilight. Before he solves it,
he proceeds, like a thief,
cautious in a dim hallway,
and nds, at the end,
himself waiting in the mirror:
a light, too bright,
of the instant ash captures his image,
darkens
the glass lenses of his eyes.
30
Houses
At the edge of the paper the pen
quivers, a seismograph, and tries
to draw in thin lines and sharp angles
the quake of the oor.
The quaking intensies, the angles turn sharper.
But this instrument is old,
it doesnt draw even the tip of the truth,
that the table is smashed to smithereens,
the house has collapsed,
the earth has opened underneath.
In the stillness that ensues, among the ruins,
the pen is absolved of all its duties.
It scribbles on the page as it pleases,
joins all the threads in the center,
a master plan
for a spiders den.
DA N PAGIS
31
NATAN ZACH
(b. 1930)
Natan Zach was born in Berlin and arrived in Haifa as a child.

From 1968 to 1979 he lived in England and wrote his PhD
dissertation at the University of Essex. After returning to Israel,
he lectured at Tel Aviv University and was appointed professor
at Haifa University. He headed the group of poets who began
publishing their work after the establishment of the state in 1948
and revolutionized Hebrew poetry in the 1950s and 1960s. An
editor, critic, translator, and poet, Zach has published ten books
of poetry, a book of short stories, two collections of essays, a
memoir, and four childrens books. His work has been translated
into twenty languages, and collections of his poems have been
published in the United States, Europe, and China. He has
received the Bialik Award, the Israel Award, the Feronia Award
(Italy), and the ACUM Award. In 2004, the University of Geneva
awarded him an Honorary Doctorate for his contribution to
the renewal of [Hebrew] poetry in the second half of the 20th
century. Most recently, Zach received the honorary title of
Cavaliere from the Italian government (2007). Zach divides his
time between Haifa and Tel Aviv. The poems appearing here are
from his collections Hard to Remember (1984) and Since Im in the
Neighborhood (1996).
A Belated Poem
It was far, as usual, a few drops that night
still stood in the window, when you said, when I said,
and we were near agreement, if very distant,
32
32
in all else.
A man wont discuss it, a man wont tell.
Three times winter wintered, there were hints:
whatever I hold in my hand drops and breaks.
Is it the spirit, is it the body,
suddenly gripped by a spasm, letting go?
Her hair was dark auburn, the color has since faded.
There remained a certain tenderness, a small area of tenderness,
or maybe not tenderness. Its hard to be precise in such matters.
Its hard to explain why, it is hard to be precise.
I said tenderness and I could have said more,
after the fact one can always say more.
One bulb of the two in the room has burnt out.
One is not enough to read but enough to weep.
Shall I weep on the terrace, in the chair, in my bed?
To Rise from Ashes

is a complicated matter. Only one bird
can do it and no one has ever seen it.
The pre-requisites, of course, are ashes: a spark,
or cinders, cigarette ashes, almost anything.
In the absence of ashes, shards will do,
crumbling plaster, a general collapse, ruins.
Anything thats anti-biological, anti-ecological.
Another condition is the ability to rise
and stand again on your feet after the fall
as in the boxing ring:
the points are against you, your chances to win
are slim, even your fans have abandoned you,
already thinking of home and a late supper.
In my youth I met a man who rose from ashes
N ATA N Z ACH
33
(Yes, he did!)
Every Sunday (from the ashes of the Sabbath)
and every Fridayfrom the ashes of weekdays.
Such as he there are but a few: a sort of a master at rising,
like Kafkas fasting artist. But for every man who rose
I knew quite a few who didnt.
Some burned in a small, quotidian ame, like a kerosene lamp or
burner,
others in a sudden blaze, like a bonre
or brushre with blaring sirens and ambulances.
And in this theres no difference between men and women
the male chauvinist pig ares up
just like the best of females, the weaker sex.
And theres no age distinction.
Some burn young, others in advanced age.
Theres no man whose time wont come.
And theres no career distinction: blue-collar erupt too!
Just like clerks and males of the liberal professions. Despite the
rumor
that theyre more re-proof.
Only few will ever rise to life or on their feet.
However, this is no reason for despair. On the contrary,
any bird-watcher will conrm: the phoenix is not
a mythological creature. It is here with us.
But extremely rare.
Self-Portrait at Night
The skull is reected in the window pane,
incorporeal, bespectacled, bearded,
sternly scrutinizing meIm not all that gray
yet. Behind it, lights, and the blackness of the sea:
it has always been like this and will always be:
light is always dubious, never
34
enough. And tonight, not hot, not cold,

a tepid12 night, and the look in the glass
that became a looking-glass, no compromise there:
opaque translucency. Is this the only
surviving gospel, and the horn now heard
from the port is the reminder?
And if so,
what else am I
yet again
asked to remember?
A night full of images, omens, likenesses.
Speak to me clear and essential things,
otherwisebetter keep still.
Meantime
Meantime, in my dream, she returns to me
when I sleep, and I tell her: Welcome back,
in the meantime, sit, and she props up the pillow,
as she always did, for it is unnatural
for a mother not to prop up her sons pillow
and for the son to be the one to prop up
his mothers pillow, wipe her cold sweat,
smooth out her hair, hold her cold hand, and say:
Dont be afraid, the place youre going to
you wont come back from empty-handed
as you have O so many times,
for the place youre going to
holds no hope, no loss, no regret and sorrow, not even
a mothers grief. The place youre going to
lacks nothing. It is complete.
12. In the Hebrew, a play on the words tepid and compromise.
N ATA N Z ACH
35
As Agreed
Look, as we promised one another,
we changed nothing and the world
is as wonderful as it was, the rain
tarries this year, but it will come:
it will come as long as were still here.
Look, as we agreed,
I am in one place, you in another.
We didnt become one, which is also natural,
and in your weakness and in mine
there looms a promise, too:
after memory forgetfulness is all.
And if the road already may incline downward
in the famed sloping print of lifes curve,
it does, in some sense, aspire upward,
and aspiration is a great thing in life,
on this, too, we agreed, you surely remember.
And if now Im alone and aching and ailing more than ever,
this, too, was a choice,
if not always conscious. And if you too are alone,
it makes my loneliness less just
and this should sustain you as well.
How fortunate that weve agreed on so little:
on parting, on loneliness and fear, the basic certainties,
and theres always something to return to,
you will see how young we will be in the end,
and the end, when it comes, will be almost just.
And everything, you will see, will be almost welcome.
Three Poems That Werent Written

1.
I wrote greetings for a friends wedding.
My lover peeked over my shoulder and said:
36
Thank God, youre writing lyrical poetry again.

I met my friend after his wedding
and he said: Even the dishes I love the most
she cant cook.
This, too, I included in the poem.
My lover read and said: You persist in writing
such everyday stuff, you do it only
to annoy me.
I went to visit Israel who was wounded.
We had to make an effort so he wouldnt notice
how hard it was to look at his face:
it was as if the odor of burning still stood
in the room and the odor of charred esh,
and the only eye left seemed as if
it had moved from its place, if such a thing is possible,
Im no doctor.
When we came home my lover said:
Now, for sure, youll write a political poem.
I told her: No, its still the same poem.
And she asked: Whats it about?
I said: About the times gone mad,
except that weve learned to live with it,
which is a great evil;
and a mans life is as hard as ever,
weve seen it all before,
but we mustnt announce it so as not
to disseminate fear and confusion.
She said: And thats a poem?
And I said: No, indeed, it didnt come out too well,
youre right, Ive decided to scrap it.
Ill only publish this
so at least theyll know what it contained.
2.
The second poem came to me in a dream,
and I spoke to it: Welcome, youre so beautiful,
its been a while since you came to me,
such a beautiful poem.
N ATA N Z ACH
37
But when I awoke I couldnt remember a thing,

which made it all the more frustrating.
But perhaps this is the price one has to pay
for waking up.
3.
The third song is sung and played on a luxury liner.
A luxury liner, all lit up, sails from Haifa Harbor.
You cant hear the song from where I stand.
O sail away ship of my youth, to remind me
that nothing begins nor ends here.
Widow
I bought a Turkish perfume,
The Gift of Heaven its called,
and dabbed my earlobes
to appeal to men.
Men dont go for perfume,
their eyes are shaved genitalia,
they werent attracted to the scent,
they went straight for my breasts.
I, too, have tired of perfume,
make myself up only when I feel like it,
comb my hair out of habit, put lipstick,
blush is no longer in fashion.
When I come to see you Saturday
Ill bring a cake.
I didnt bake it
so Im not responsible.
Youll open the door for me,
overwhelmed by my perfume.
Youll look deep into my eyes,
stroke my hair on the Persian rug.
38
So come rest between my breasts,

my heart is lled with aging stars,
but dont come too soon
we still have to wait.
Hayuta
Hayuta remembers better days,
all her past is before her.
Sitting in a wheelchair,
she displays memories like embroidery.
In that small house,
at the end of the gravel path with the geranium owerbed,
there was a green door
and a mosquito screen.
Every morning the birds took off
in a metallic bluish volley,
father went to work,
mother was always busy.
The radio played mitsvoth,
in the suburb at the edge of town
only good deeds were done,
even Motale the mist has grown up.
Their acne disappeared,
Hayuta remembers and sighs,
with a strong, veined hand
she strokes the wheel.
What once was
is laid out today before her.
In the closet, in rows,
shirts, photographs, bandages await her.
N ATA N Z ACH
39
And a girl in a eeting world,

already a woman in a warped mirror,
primps her hair somewhat,
knowing that only a little good is left.
Comrade Poet 13
My nails grow deep into my esh, into death,
and Im a poet. In boots of exquisite leather
I go round the globe in steadfast strides.
Every shut place I open, wherever
people gather I approach and watch.
Ever ready, I recite my poems in festivals,
my digital time diminishing with every recital.
Every poetic muscle aches already, but I will yet
scale the peak of Mount Everest, just to stand there.
Blinded by the cold Ill report
on mans condition, Ill bend from my heights
toward small naked women
under mosquito nets in India.
Im great, Im impressive,
but no one invites me into his home,
Im too famous and my fame only hurts me
with the young, hewed on my forehead like Cains mark.
Yesterday the paper on which my books were printed
still contained wood, today its recycled,
but its good that I existed, took pictures, lled space.
You could never deny
my place in history, the Jews already translate me
into English. Im still strong. Listen,
the earth still shakes under my feet in the stadium where I read
before 100,000 cheering men and women. Here I go,
coming, advancing through the snow storm, the cold.
Dont forget me: the alcohol was just a joke,
a temporary relief.
13. This poem is a photo-montage of two Russian poets, personal friends of Zach.
40
A Small Error in the Machine

When the Nazis came they were quite polite.
The father was a known gure, at least to them,
the Italian mother was no problem, they only wished
to verify a few minor details. Thats all, according to protocol.
They entered the at, didnt even presume to sit down.
However, that very night a friendincredibly, a police ofcer
called and advised to leave immediately, preferably within the hour,
for the injunction was already out
because of the wealth, as usual. Jews were always
well-to-do and a Judas would always be found,
even among Jews. And so an hour passed,
two hours, two difcult hours for a man
having a hard time deciding. But with rst light
he packed his wife and son,
saying soothing words, such as: Its only temporary,
a small error in the machine. Youll see,
before the year is out well be back.
Said it once, twice, and only on the third burst into tears,
weeping: It cant be happening to me, not to me. . . .
Goodbye Berlin
Hello Berlin, said the wooden leg,
Hello Nazis, Hello anti-Nazis,
Hello sons of Nazis, granddaughters of anti-Nazis,
Ive heard all your stories,
what are they to me.
Hello Berlin, said the wooden leg,
I lost my sister on the train,
or in the camp, the location no longer matters,
Im no longer the loving leg,
I am, in fact, just the step-leg.
I came to say goodbye, not to sing your praise.
Ill tread all over town, give a bleeding speech
N ATA N Z ACH
41
in a central, empty square. Ill kick

with my shoe, not my sisters, all that wasnt mine and is no longer
hers,
in a place that may be repaired but is irredeemable.
Hello Berlin, here we meet again. Because of you, not me,
I lost a sister, esh and blood, made for humans.
Because of you, not me, Im only a leg that hurts,
like back then in the train or camp,
the location no longer matters.
Goodbye to all that, every parting is hard,
even for a genuine wooden leg,
even from a town like my sisters.
On her behalf or mine Im still around,
spying on you all the time,
damning your worldly ways.
May your dust, Berlin, be blessed.
May your memory be your grave.
This is my sister speaking from my throat.
Your dirt is her dirt,
your dust her dust,
and your past passed her over.
Confession: Gentle
I was born to be gentle.
Fact: I have gentle hair.
You want to check? Go right ahead,
my shampooed head is laid before you.
Forgive the bald spots. These are just
the teeth of time.
I was born to be gentle. It so happens
that my parents decided they must emigrate
to a non-gentle country. They werent frivolous,
42
they consulted whomever they could. Even Hitler

supported their decision, said it was denitely wise.
And so a man born to be gentle arrived
in a non-gentle country. You tell me
what choice did I have. I still comb my hair
with a gentle comb, brush my teeth, grow bald,
take my clothes to the cleaners,
never insult the neighbors unless
its absolutely necessary.
Its all a mistake, they said, some terrible mistake. As for me,
I content myself with crying out in my sleep.
Will it help, do you think?
Dont make me laugh, Im a serious man.
And were I not cursed by the times,
Id give you a sharp answer,
perhaps not so gentle.
And Then We Had

And then we had a quiet evening and we were quiet
and then the storm subsided and we werent stormy
and we knew it mattered not at all
whether we were right or wrong.
And then you took off your shoes and we were homey
and I opened the window and we were breezy,14
rst signs of spring stirred in the curtain,
and I, at least, stood at the window, ruminating.
Because of what could have been and will never be
because of what Ive done and keep doing still.
And a bird ew away in the night, leaving behind
not a clear sign, but a dark one.
14. In the Hebrew, breeze (wind) and spiritual share the same root.
N ATA N Z ACH
43
And I feared the spirit of the times and an illusive kindness,

and I feared your delusions, and the heart feared its lies.
But everything dimmed everything and said its goodbyes.
And the night was magical and fragile and unbearably wondrous
and every limb in the body shouted, Not now, not now,
and I stood there, not knowing the why, and the how.
44
SHIN SHIFRA
(b. 1931)
Shin Shifra was born in Tel Aviv. She studied kabbala, literature,
and education at Hebrew University and at Tel Aviv University.
She has published several volumes of poetry, prose, and literary
criticism and is a renowned translator and scholar of Sumerian
poetry. She has taught creative writing to high school students
and is a lecturer on ancient Near Eastern literature at Tel Aviv
University. One of the rst vocal feminists, she participated in
several international conferences for women writers, such as the
PEN Conference in Yugoslavia, in 1989, and her work has been
published in Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, Spanish,
and Polish. Her awards include the Prime Minister Award, the
ACUM Award, the Leah Goldberg Award, and the Tchernichovsky
Award. She was awarded the Amichai Award for poetry in 2001
and the Presidents Award in 2004. The poems appearing here are
from her collections Womans Song (1962), The Next Step (1968),
Poems 19731985 (1987), and A Woman Who Practices How to
Live, Poems 19861999 (2001).
That Made Me Woman

They say it is good to be,
and I the woman say:
it is good to desist!
45
Blessed be He who made me woman15

created of nothing!
Blessed be He who hasnt made me man
who never dies
and is not born.
The Spider of Sin

The spider of sin
wove around my bed
the web of punishment.
I escaped
to the sweetest of dreams
but the webs softness
pulled in magic spells
to fear.
Every spiderdeceitful.
On Rain
We will lie in the mud
the rain will drench us
and our sonwill be born
of dust
- - - - - Too bad
we worried
about my new dress
15. Alludes to the prayer book. Men are to say: Blessed be He who hasnt made me
woman. Women are to say: Blessed be He who made me according to His will.
46
Conceit
You rose from the sea
the whole horizon your muzzle
to guzzle
A naughty wave
ed the sea
yet always returns
only froth
Lie
How foolish you are
that you failed to see
beyond the veils.
How miserable I am
that I lied so well.
Tear up!
Father
Tonight suddenly
I sprang toward you
from guilt
to ripe maturity
kissing your lips
against his face
A Stranger
A stranger was smiling
at me
SH IN SH IFR A
47
who is this stranger

smiling at me
on this fragrant morning
with such intimacy
with such insolence
as if wed woken in
the same bed.
You
indeed we have.
In This Split Second

In this split second
between sight and recognition
that this is me
would you have loved me
as you once did?
Sabbath Prayer
Let there be in the house a troop
of toddlers
let them eat fruit by the rotels16
as we used to at fathers
let them extend a tongue
to have a cactus thorn plucked out
let them split open a g: Any worms?
Let them bring in mud
from the garden and I will yell at them
let them quarrel and call each other names
and they will give me strength
like the angels of the recitation of
Shema
and my forefathers will be named in them
16. Rotela weight measure in Palestine during the British Mandate, equaling
approximately seven pounds.
48
Summer
Dry thorns
like a camp of crusaders
limbs slashed
only the points of blades
the jutting of helmets
in the rooms
blinds are drawn
women
tear their esh
off tan bodies
jasmine scents
wild-leaved tendrils
and the exhalation of the well in the orchard
a million years ago.
Blinds are drawn.
This Evening
If things were tailored
tonight to t my size
Id put on a frock
of crimson
weaved of raw lust
like the scent of unruly chrysanthemum
harboring a promise
of rain.
Whomever I meet this evening
on my way
will be small for my size
and when I return Ill be an old hag
and lust will turn
to longing
SH IN SH IFR A
49
Ecclesiastes
Every day the sun like a groom
toward me
and until night
I waited for you clad in white
who is it tottering up the stairs
the voice of my love
your arms closed on me
in a robotic clasp
Goat
Our goat was going to die
the whole neighborhood knew
our goat was going
to die. Friday
near the ice-wagon
our neighbor Shoshana
asked me how
the goat was doing.
Our goat
died, I said, not
looking into her eyes.
He is better off now, said
the neighbor Shoshana, and I
didnt look into her eyes
thinking she had no heart
to feel sorry for a small white
goat that died. Next day
Saturday noon
they found the neighbor
Shoshana hanging from her neck
in her fathers stable.
If only I had looked
into her eyes.
50
Moonstruck
Uncle Yerocham was so worried
about Aunt Miriam he would
leave her alone so shed know
what it feels like to sleep without him
hed shut the door on her while she
uttered like a dove in the large bed
covered the window
with a blanket locked the door
twice and again unlocked it
and all because at noon she dared
to mention, it doesnt matter
what, Mother guessed that perhaps
he was simply jealous of her spirit
because that morning for no reason
her eyes shone with a nuptial light
and so he determined
to restrain her, she turns the house
into a grave, he hollered
at the top of his lungs, I was a child
on a family visit to the house
of Aunt Miriam and Uncle
Yerocham. Moonstruck, she walks
in her sleep, explained Uncle
Yerocham when they found
Aunt Miriam walking barefoot
at sunrise, only Mother guessed
Dove
Aunt Miriam and Uncle Yerocham loved
like love-birds ate from one plate
ate the Sabbath meal from one
plate. Uncle Yerocham was so worried
SH IN SH IFR A
51
about Aunt Miriam, Dont go out in the blazing

sun, Its freezing out,
he bought and bought only the best, shoes
even lingerie. Aunt Miriam got thicker and thicker
and thicker, gorged on candies in hiding
and kept silent silent, and Uncle Yerocham,
the most compassionate of husbands, raged
his voice through the rooms, She simply
doesnt know how to talk to people.
In the kitchen, at times, I heard her
spit, To hell, in pursed lips, and I
couldnt understand how a quiet woman practically a dove
loads one word with so much hate
enunciating every syllable.
He ran his home with a mighty hand
and when they shut the gate behind her, she
spoke and spoke and spoke until
she ew away
and they had sons
Vegetarian
Eats
her father
he gets stuck in the throat not
to swallow and not
to swallow
To
get rid of the gag
like a twisted snake
she swallows herself
to vomit
Many weeks
she eats
only ice cream
52
Shame
At the airport a man
raised his voice
to a womanWhy must you
alwaysa minute after
he struck her face
with the heavy suitcase
as she bent forward
to rescue his briefcase
from falling and scattered papers.
Inadvertently perhaps, perhaps not,
for all the while,
as the onlooker watched,
he didnt bother to glance her way
or ease the burden of luggage, coat,
purse, umbrella. The onlooker
caught the shine of a tear and she
lowered her eyes, on her head
a crown of shame.
A Woman Who Practices How to Live

1.
A woman who practices how to live visits
her husbands grave, the scent
of grove patches brings tears
to her eyes, salty, salty, from longing, a woman
practicing, suddenly resolves, it doesnt
become her at all to place at his head a large
clay potted plant, as the narrow stretch
would allow between his space and hers,
waiting, frets about whether to plant
bougainvillea, red as blood,
civilized, or purple as a feral
desert sunset.
SH IN SH IFR A
53
2.
A woman who practices living may
go to the cinema on a rst summer evening,
and doesnt, may go to a Danziger exhibit
at the Tel Aviv Museum, and doesnt, instead
she speaks on the phone with the gardener
in charge at the cemetery.
3.
To cover with aptenia her adjoining
lot, suggests the gardener, and shes evasive, he suggests
pine in her adjoining lot, and shes evasive, to uproot
a pine in her adjoining lot when the time
comes, doesnt feel right, she stammers, and the gardener in charge
at the cemetery, mistaking her
motives, guarantees its a good
omen for longevity, a plant, she requests, large, bougainvillea,
a temporary pot easily transported from place
to place, when the time comes, as I lived, she whispers
to herself, a woman who practices.
4.
A woman who practices living permits
herself to admit to someone,
True, Im afraid, and permits
that someone to throw in her face, Home?! Whos
waiting for you at home, woman, youve decreed divine punishment
by premature death, a woman practicing dying whispers
to herself, True.
5.
A woman who practices living goes
to market to buy sh, the stench
of the sewage owing in the gutter
rises up to her nose, chickens hang
from hooks, a man steering a cart
strikes her ankle, her eyes blurry from so many
pyramids of apples, pears, mangos,
at home she cant swallow the sh
the stench sticks in her throat.
54
6.
A woman who practices living climbs
the stairs on a sweltering day in some
ofce building on Kibbutz Galuyot Street.
She mounts the stairs and a man leaning against
the bannister, a cigarette dangling from his lips
with the ease of a southern street, a stubble of a beard,
revives her spirit as she climbs with sore feet and says,
An old woman, why no escalators, and the man leaning
leisurely smoking a cigarette, Not an old woman, ya ruhi,17
one day therell be an escalator, ya ruhi, my soul.
My soul, said a loving man in her ear many years ago,
now in the ground, my soul.
17. Ya ruhi, an Arabic idiom, meaning my soul, frequently used as a term of

endearment by Jews originating from Arab lands.
SH IN SH IFR A
55
ISRAEL HAR
(b. 1932)
Israel Har was born in the city of Chelm, Poland. He arrived in

Israel in 1936, and lives in Tel Aviv. His rst book of poems, A
Paupers Discourse on a Bush, was published in 1962. He founded
and was editor in chief of Sifriat Tarmil (The Knapsack Library).
Har has published four volumes of poetry and is the recipient of
the ACUM Award, the Metula Award, and the Prime Minister
Award. The poems appearing here are from his 1994 collection
Edge of Darkness and Bread.
Morning in a Foreign Place

for Yosl Bergner
Move away from this blue
let the heavy curtain
cut
between me and the cruel
morning. Like so. Yes, now
I think I feel good
in this reddish darkness
(angels and a moon painted on the wall)
and if up there they dont
strike the piano keys
I will hear the sea
56
56
which never rests

will never rest
the whispering sea
the raging sea
the rising sea
the roaring sea
absorbing the sun
lusting after the sand
the blue sea
the great sea
in its love
breaks to the sand
at his lip
the edge of the pit.
Salt clamors in todays picture;
a shore.
Points of dreams embrace.
The moment of rst meeting
Grave in the Sun

for Mahmud Sabag, in memoriam
Noon: a man in acrid clothing
drops on the sand on a beach
to return.
A hard sun on his back sun on his neck
acrid clothing on the sand
he dreams of love dreams grass
his face in sand he dreams a cradle
his eyes see a shadow
a hard sun on his neck sun on his back
ngers eyes face
ISR A EL H A R
57
a hard sun like a hump riding the sea

his back his face in the sand
dreams love dreams grass
the sea rocks like a crib dreams waves
gentle waves lap at the foot
of tents at palm-branches
on a mans grave roses
small waves gentle waves
lap at the feet of a man
acrid clothing falling on sand
at the noon of his life a man is interred in sand
at the noon of his life a man is bound to love
love in his soul death on his neck
the beat of drums a choking in his throat
the beat of drums and a mourners song
a tent palm-branches woven
with roses on a mans grave in the sun
death in his throat found peace
in the sand
A Cradle Story
A.
Suddenlyat his age
not young not old
in his sixty-third year my father
misses his father-in-lawmy grandfather
out of whose bed my crib was made.
Let him rise from his sleep
and I have some questions and talks
to discuss with him.
B.
Grandfather was immersed in study
and didnt feel the re
58
that burnt the bread

didnt notice the re erupting from the stove
and catching the shelves
didnt watch the our burning
the walls and the roof are about to collapse
grandfather sinks in the depths of study
and the village is on re
C.
Tonight
an infant in my fathers arms pulls his beard
gently he parts her ngers
and releases his hair
between the walls of Beit Yosef
after the inauguration dinner
at midnight
rain on your face in my arms to your bed
D.
In time dawn rose
with all your aunts and uncles we went up the mountain
to visit a grave
on the way orchards sparkle to dry
in the sun
the carcass of a horse
between cars racing on the road
colorful workers in the cabbage plots
sprinklers and the dark ploughed soil of the valley
like clouds in autumn skies
it is cold on the mountain
E.
At all the bus stops in the gray wet city people
in long lines under umbrellas and I among them
to return to you
Ive come
your mother stands lighting the candles
and youre asleep with longing
ISR A EL H A R
59
F.
Come come happy one rise and shine
let us know no more sorrow
A Sour Pickle the Angel of Death

for Yaakov David Abramsky
My father passed away
like a Jew: unprepared.
He knew where he came from
he knew where hes headed
always saw it before him
and yet: unprepared.
It happened in the month of Shevat
at eleven oclock in the morning.
The parchment of his Torah on the desk
the ink in the inkwell
in his right hand a quill
a craftsman working at his craft
he suddenly felt an urge:
hankered for a sour pickle.
And no woman in the house.
(His mother, in my childhood, was buried
down the slopes of the Carmel
a few steps from his infant son
a grandson who would never walk into her arms;
his father in the mountains of Jerusalem
a bit to the south and above my mother
and now he
still dwelling on the plain
surrounded by housing projects and a wall.)
It happened at eleven oclock in the morning
in the month of Shevat
the voice sounded forty days before his birth
a sour pickle. Sixty years he suffered
from heartburn. His voice in prayer always
loud and clear as crystal.
60
He who has eyes to see would feel it in his ears:

clear crystal beneath the re of heartburn.
As if late meeting someone
he put on the rabbinical hat
and crossed the street.
It happened at eleven oclock in the morning
before noon on a day in Shevat.
He already had one foot on the sidewalk:
a sour picklethe angel of death
a bike hit him. Ran him over.
In his pocket they found a piece of paper
with my old address.
And youre faithful to resuscitate the dead.18
Dust Instead of Glory

A man sits on the ground
for his mother
his wife sits in her room
on the ground
a man cries for his mother
living on the earth
a man and his wife sit
he is the man sitting for his father
on the ground
she is his wife sitting in her room
on the ground
a man sits weeping for his father
his wife on the ground recalls
a girl and her father
an infant and her father eeing
their persecutors
running in the day from their persecutors at night
sore heels
pursued at night eeing in the day
18. From the prayer book.
ISR A EL H A R
61
eeing their persecutors

at night from their persecutors in daylight
lthy rags the feet
on the ground
eeing their persecutors
have reached the water
a girl rides the bones
of her fathers neck
hard against the bones of her thighs
a man and his daughter
bones
swim in the great river
running from their persecutors
have reached the water
a girl on her fathers neck
oating
cross the great Yenisey
bound east
opposite
on the bank
her mother brother and sister
now her feet too
on the ground
her father
one moment his head above water
in the tide
the depths of Yenisey swallowed my father
forever
and I and my mother and brother and sister
on the bank
watching
weve come to the promised land
always
his voice in my ears
now in your ears too a man
a man
and his wife
on the ground
62
sitting
now a man and his wife sit on the ground
for the son
in the corner
in a wide bowl
in olive oil
a memorial candle
oats
quivering
ickering on the ground
large shadows
a man and his wife on the ground sit
a father and mother
sit on the ground
crying over the seed
and an infant girl
from the arms of her father
was left on the ground
Australian Story
I worked hard. I planted a bush.
A neighbor came: Ahrosemary.
What a great scent.
It reminds me of Lodz Ghetto.
Paupers Talk
With a wooden spoon I scrape
a stew from the bottom of the pot
yet the ration does not satisfy.
Ill sing to the morning
croon to the nettle
whose bloom takes the form
of a spike or bevy
ISR A EL H A R
63
whose leaves are streaked

with toxic hairs
and is good fodder for animals
and feed for birds.
And under the nettle a myrtle will grow
with a thick tree branch
of white yellow buds
its perennial leaves fragrant.
Go break bread and eat
for no money or price
like Isaiah who called in the market:
Oh, come you thirsty
stand on line and be sated
And Tomorrow I Too to Die Like This

for Bell, with eternal love
Warm is my heart
in my thoughts re burns
I spoke in my tongue:
(Psalms xxxix, 4)
February twelfth nineteen ninety two.
Guenadi died yesterday
from cold and hunger.
It says in the paper.
Comrade Artzi from the welfare committee said
there is no justication for dying of hunger,
it says in the paper: no justication.
Albert, Guenadis friend in cold and hunger,
says Guenadi was skinny
hauling crates
for two or three new shekels,
collecting remnants of rotting fruit and vegetables,
and if theres no foodyou drink
because of the cold. Sympathetic neighbors
64
gave torn blankets

of feathers of birds who died
of cold and hunger in the snow of yesteryear.
It says in the paper. I read:
died of cold and hunger,
and I read again
to understand what is written
to understand what I read,
died of cold and hunger. And comrade Artzi says
theres no justication to die of hunger,
it says in the paper. And comrade Haim,
the Socialist legislator demands
with a new law
to increase his pension by a third:
from eight thousand three hundred and forty
new shekels a month to
twelve thousand four hundred and thirty
new shekels a month. A law
that will affect two additional comrades
in the land. It says in the paper. By now
Im fed up with law
with lawblow. (A twitch
at the corner of mouth and eye seems
to indicate
one should blot.) Let
there be a law of joke. Yet
even a scoundrel within the law
should not be allowed to joke
while a man of cold and hunger
is lying dead,
it says in the paper.
Because of a strike
social security
didnt pay for the burial.
I read again and repeat what it says
in short lines
not poetry
not prose
in the style of Hunger by Knut Hamsun
ISR A EL H A R
65
or
I Am Hungry, said Georg Fink,
a realist. Reality. The style
perhaps somewhat clumsy, a slice
of reality: an abandoned structure
in Shepher Alley behind a market
the rst Hebrew city
between naked walls
heaps of garbage and waste
a stench and freezing cold
in the building during the day.
At night the reality structure
of Shepher Alley is dark.
Comrade Artzi says:
No justication to die of hunger.
Albert the friend tells:
One has no strength
to haul crates
so theres no money
to buy food
and skinny Guenadi
says to me
bring me food
Im hungry
and its very cold at night
so he drinks
today hes dead.
And comrade Haim the legislator
demands a greater pension.
And the comrade from the theater in the capital
the one with the green eyes,
a known liar, misleads
a working man
toward crowded endless
halls of hunger
whose end cannot be justied.
And comrade Guenya concluded,
And tomorrow I too to die like this
nobody knows.
66
All is said in the paper

Guenadi Druker died of cold and hunger.
And the days are days
of a lofty age. Crafty age.
Born and unnished
--------------------------------------------------a praise full of fraud
bespeaks
a serf of dust
seemingly oating
ISR A EL H A R
67
DAVID AVIDAN
(19341995)
David Avidan was born in Tel Aviv. He is considered one of

Israels leading poets and a major originator of contemporary,
avant-garde Israeli poetry. Avidans work has been translated
extensively, and collections of his poems have been published
in English, French, Russian, and Arabic. His awards include the
Abraham Woursell Award from the University of Vienna, the
Bialik Award, and the Prime Minister Award. He published
nineteen books of poetry as well as plays and childrens books.
The poems appearing here are from his collection Something for
SomebodySelected Poems 19521964.
The Stain Remained on the Wall

Someone tried to scrub the stain off the wall.
But the stain was too dark (or converselytoo bright).
At any ratethe stain remained on the wall.
So I sent the painter to paint the wall green.
But the stain was too bright.
I hired the plaster man to plaster the wall clean.
But the stain was too dark.
So I took a kitchen knife and tried to scrape it off.
And the knife was painfully sharp.
68
68
Only yesterday they sharpened it.

And yet.
And I sted an ax and pummeled the wall, but stopped in time.
I dont know why it suddenly occurred to me
the wall might collapse, and the stain will remain anyway.
When they put me to the wall, I asked to stand close to it.
I shielded it with a broad chest (who knows: maybe).
And when they slashed my back, a lot of blood owed, but only
from the back.
Theyre shooting.
And I believed the blood will cover the stain.
A second round of shooting.
And I believed so the blood will cover the stain.
Housing
When he was thirty-ve
the sporting principle
still guided
his nancial life. Perhaps
even excessively (a big boy
with a bald spot, as
he was once dened by
some very good and very very
stable friends). Later
ten or fteen or more
years went by with great speed. The sons
already at the peak of procreation. The wind
slightly bent his body, and the sun
mercilessly expanded the reigning zone
of the bald spot. Houses damaged
during the battles were repaired. In the meantime,
DAV ID AV IDA N
69
new ones were built. The wind

would remind him moment-moment that in fact
he is not so young anymore. The sun, too,
as mentioned, wasnt very generous to him.
And suddenly he wished with all his might
for something of his own. All his days
he had been just some hireling, a complete hireling. At least
his own athe told himselfat least
a at that would be all his own. Another
twenty-ve years went by. In the meantime
he paid every month substantial amounts
toward the at. And at the end
of said twenty-ve years, and hes
about seventy-ve, and his wife, too,
by all accounts is at the edge of the grave,
the at,
for which he had paid with the best years of his life,
was all his. Now it was possible
to tap the walls with a certain peace of mind,
stroke the handsome tiles and also feel
youve done something with your life (maybe
simply just a legacy but
the sons already are far away
in time and place). The at
is like a daughter. The bathroom
is all yours, every square foot. And then suddenly
to die
from a difcult illness or old age or just
many-many years of fatigue and used-up
irreparable breath and distress
with which youve built your home. One
bright day, ancient hands grip the hallway walls
as if in a desperate need to conrm
something solid and durable and not transient
in this sudden fog that has enclosed
you, and which will soon, no doubt,
call upon your spouse.
70
Incident
The houses shook as if chilled. Facing them
neglected lawns uttered in the rain.
And indeed, our misfortune struck and struck
and lurked and advanced like a blade in the grass.
And we took into account all the particulars.
The forecaster wasnt wrong and also predicted rains.
But our misfortune struck and struck,
and our blade moved in the grass.
We tried to forget the whole affair.
We rationalized: just an unfortunate disagreement.
But our misfortune is the whole affair,
and so at times disagreements occur.
There was moisture in the streets. The usual.
Its a good thing we remembered to take a coat.
And it is good that we are so resilient.
Maybe in fact it will all be dismissed still.
Because perhaps one day well be very changed.
Then only the warm winds will lash at us.
And for a while during the year also a little rain.
And well lounge a lot upon the grass.
Later well go out to roam the earth.
And the road will be wide. Not obstinate.
But our misfortune struck and struck
and advanced and gobbled like a blade in the grass.
The houses calmed down somewhat. Facing them
neglected lawns dozed in the sun.
And perhaps this thing never occurred.
Or perhaps it did only yesterday.
DAV ID AV IDA N
71
Interim Summation
Yes, the night was full and crammed. At least
the two of us here, young, at the foot of the bridge.
Over there benches and low fences.
Over here a stubborn dull silence breathes.
Yes, the night is full and crammed. At least
they didnt hang us from low fences.
And we tried to see this night
with good eyes. We even tried
here and there to express decent opinions
and supposedly we succeeded.
Yes, the night was stark and honest
and I was more or less content.
Later she zipped herself up with a zipper
and suddenly we stood and began walking.
And we saw how a warm wind covers over
darkness and a cement oor. Filthy.
And the bridge seemed like some ruined city
we left behind and went walking.
At any rateit was a typical night out
(embellishing should be charged to aging).
And yet why did we feel so clearly
that we came back as if to a different land
that is all benches and a density of walls
and washed streets and the hour is late.
As said, it was a typical night out
(misgivings to be charged to aging).
When we got home it was almost morning.
We went up. We yawned. We made coffee.
And the built city panted toward morning
72
like a woman in heat toward a handsome male.

And the built city groaned toward morning
like a throat to a knife. And morning fell
like a cool white parachute. And the morning
a clear summer morning even fair.
At any rateit was a typical summer morning
(exaggerations to be charged to aging).
Power of Attorney
(for whom it may concern)
What justies most of all
the loneliness, the great despair,
the strange submission to the burden
of great loneliness of great despair,
is the simple cutting fact
we have nowhere to go.
On clear nights the air is cold
and at times on cloudy nights as well,
and theres rain and hot spells,
and beautiful bodies, and also faces,
that sometimes smile and sometimes dont,
sometimes because of him, sometimes because of her.
The landscape is simple and unambiguous,
angels do not climb up and down the ladder,
sometimes you hate, sometimes love,
a few friends, but mostly foes,
and a strong urge to ow,
like a river, alone, in broad daylight,
to remain always young, and to dream
about a foolhardy rush, in broad daylight,
like a river, alone, to ow and ow,
only our body, day by day, grows old.
DAV ID AV IDA N
73
What justies most of all

the dream, the great despair,
the knowledge that there is no justication
and looking for it anew every moment,
the excitement, the dread,
what justies most of all,
what justies the great despair
is the simple cutting fact
we have no place to go.
Only our body, day by day, grows old,
and we a river, in broad daylight,
to ow alone, alone to ow,
what justies, what justies the dream,
what justies the great despair,
what justies most of all.
P.S. The nights are clear and the air is cold,
theres fervor and energy but not love,
no longer a smile, no longer words,
angels on the ladder do not climb up nor down,
the poems, as is their way, only tell
what can be told in words,
and so off a cliff they pitch themselves
down to the great sea where waves
rise and fall, rise and fall.
Personal Problems
Because I loved you so much I couldnt tell you.
I couldnt tell you I loved you so much.
I loved you so much.
Until other days came and I could tell you.
I could tell you because I loved you.
Because I loved you.
The trees blossomed in green and the sun grew dark.
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And the more I loved you the darker it grew.

Distant. Ready to leap. Like a certain breed of panther.
(Truly, it did remind one of a panther.)
And then we came to town.
A lili knew me.
In the morning she woke me.
And still I loved you.
Final light came suspending all doubts leaving
only the movie-house white and blazing in the sun.
He who has something to hide
shouldnt be seen in the sun.
And he who loves mustnt go into town.
Dance Music
We reected at length. Light ooded
the foreheads rectangle, the eyes, the eyebrows. We asked
the same questions and were answered
as always. Winter arrived
and saddened us. From others
we asked nothing and from ourselves
we asked only little. But we grasped
that daylight is not hostile and that night
is only a passing nuisance. Rain came
and silenced the tune. We turned on the radio,
dimmed the lights, and quietly dove
into dark and shadowy depths. The hairy creature
awoke in us. Man is the sole
goal of all creation. And so
woman found us. We were
hard and festive until the end of night.
Why did light ood the eyes, eyebrows,
the foreheads rectangle, the back, the body. The rain
why did it come, and how would you explain
that we passed underneath and did not sink.
DAV ID AV IDA N
75
Will Power
One measures his trembling with a shaky hand.
It is hard hard to trust a trembling.
Between border and border a small legacy: a homeland.
And even a smaller one: a birth certicate.
But behind him darkness
a demarcation between two glowing borders
governing his weakness.
Or, all at once it seduces all the motives,
and he becomes a man instantly
oating only with a wakeful memory
between the starting line and the grave
where he turns from side to side.
Safe Distance
Forget me.
If you believe in the sun,
criticize the owers,
rely on the winds,
forget me.
I was born into a too classied world,
laden with innumerable considerations and obligations.
Had I been born fty years before,
it is possible I would have known myself
under more favorable circumstances,
with a different birth certicate
of thick paper and Gothic characters.
Too bad. And yet
now
I to myself. Myself to myself. Bone of myself.
Only from afar do I hear the old drums.
And the eardrum can barely receive them.
And the eardrum can barely emit them.
Sounds.
Shadows.
76
Rings.
Later everything will be wide open
as before the deluge.
Last-Last
Theyve always waited for just this moment. Since then
everything was folded everything approved. Only
something was less solid, bolder,
born without a silencer, and therefore it grated.
As if oil were spent off the earth, as if
the thin earth consumed it all.
And later with a soft hum they led
what was left into the darkness.
Experiments in Hysterics
There are people whove got nothing to lose, there are people
whove got nothing. What
havent they got, what
havent they got to lose? There are people
with a time-bomb inside, theyve got
time that is about to explode. What
have they got inside that is about, what
have they got to lose? And there are, of course,
other ways to describe the feeling. Its possible, for instance,
to slow down allatonce the wheel of reexes, then suddenly
all goes back to its crystal form. Theyre visible,
those whove got nothing to lose, theyre visible, you see them,
perhaps even see them in the image of an advanced submarine, a
submarine
in fact that hasnt been tested yet, a submarine in fact that may
never be tested. The deep waters
receive it with a quivering sigh. It is
their big moment. They have no
DAV ID AV IDA N
77
reservations about the speed, they have no

other speed to offer. Yet it is clear,
this is not the point, this is not the point:
will the walls hold up or not? Of course,
of course theyll hold up. The fortune tellers, the best ones,
have nodoubt, to wit, there are fears, but nodoubt, the best
ones, the very best ones. And heres the point:
Will hold up? Will not? And the more important question, that
theres
noneed, although the possibility exists, possibility always exists,
to couch it in powerfully rousing similes, the more important
question, the most important, is this: Am I, and suddenly, of all
things,
in rst person, leaving noroom for mistakes, am I
already afraid or still afraid, already
afraid or still already
afraid?
Very important, then, to keep writing. One must not
miss opportunities. Immortalize yourself while
theres still time, before you stumble. Tomorrow youll be changed,
tomorrow
will be late. Tomorrow
is always late. This is
the system, theres no other. There is a later one, but
it will be effective, denitely effective, starting tomorrow, only
when it will be too late. Come, come with me. Summer
will never return. The earth
begins to travel. Tomorrow
Ill take you to the circus. Everything
will travel in the circus. The crust of the earth
will move slowly-slowly, to the sound of distant chimes, with an
overwhelming effort, fully
insured. There will be no
motion more assured. Come, come
to the sudden joy, remember me favorably, speak
of me favorably in that other morning when Ill wake up anew
into the murderous unreal speed of impressions
to which Im subjected, it seems, irrevocably.
78
DAHLIA RAVIKOVITCH
(19362005)
Dahlia Ravikovitch was born in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Yehuda Amichais, Natan Zachs, and David Avidans contemporary,
Ravikovitch was a major force in shaping modern Hebrew poetry.
She studied at Hebrew University and worked as a journalist and
a teacher. She published twelve volumes of poetry, three collections
of short stories, several childrens books, and translations of William
Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Her poems were translated into
twenty-three languages, and collections of her work have appeared
in the United States and England. Her awards include the Israel
Award, the Bialik Award, the Prime Minister Award, the Shlonsky
Award, the Brenner Award, and the Ussishkin Award. The poems
appearing here are from her 1992 collection Mother with Child.
An Exceptional Autumn
Slowly slowly I see it vividly,
how I was trapped here.
Ten in the morning, a pastoral tranquility,
following a night-long vigil.
Plants bloom wherever the eye falls.
Patches of fabric cover every available surface.
And the kettle.
And the household implements conspicuously spare.
And the calm within.
And from without, the plaintive wail of a toddler:
79
theyve snatched his swing.

Someone digs with a simple farming tool
Ive forgotten what its called.
(Forgotten? Ah, well.)
Steady blows, and the rustle of a hose being dragged along.
Everybody here sweeps and cultivates
the fauna and ora.
The women also knit a lot,
manual labor is of the utmost importance.
This diligence and drive to be useful
paint a false idyllic picture.
But for the fear of the Labor Movements creed,19
men would have swallowed each other alive.
Its been three days already
that my mother sleeps the sleep of the just.
I said to Ido: Grandma sleeps in peace and quiet.
And Ido said: Is it perhaps eternal sleep?
God forbid, I said,
not eternal sleep.
Just peace and quiet.
And yet, without sowing fear,
I tell myself
eternal sleep is best of all.
An Attempt to Express an Opinion

Rain on the square
of Santa Maria Novella.
A few people with umbrellas,
a very light drizzle,
and I ponder the meaning
of the word banal;
have I understood you correctly,
19. Alludes to Avoth III.2: But for the fear of the ruling power men would have
swallowed each other alive.
80
and did I have an opinion at all.

Rain on Piazza Santa Maria,
and rain on Piazza Santa Croce,
and rain falls on the citys pavement
and upon all of Tuscany.
And what is the little of this that will cling to me,
the little that will actually be left me;
for most things,
virtually most things,
are merely make-believe and lack substance.
A very light drizzle
only slightly dampens the cobblestones,
doesnt drive people off the street,
doesnt leave behind a dense slosh.
Have I claried to your satisfaction
my position on the banal,
have I understood your meaning,
have I expressed an opinion at all?
On Life and on Death20

Nights hed get drunk,
spill his glass, mess up the table,
at times yelling: No more talk!
Waving his arm, attempting to verbalize
(all at once I forget what it was about,
and what it is that stuck in my mind).
It seems he specialized in death as subject,
he saw his years arranged in columns, columns,
twenty years, or twenty-ve,
he knew it was a diminishing story,
he knew it wouldnt have heights and peaks,
he would shed his years like rotten teeth.
He used to strike the table and smash a plate,
20. Also a slang usage among children when faced with a challenge.
DA H L IA R AV IKOV IT CH
81
would break whatever stood in his way,

twenty years or twenty-ve
he couldnt extricate himself from despair.
He was a man without faith.
Heroic tales proved too much for him;
he wouldnt even thumb through the Bible.
If he had an insight, it was by way of negation.
This is not a story of possible salvation.
He saw his life ahead trudging along,
he saw it spread before him and dwindling,
plain as a jar of pickled greens,
up until a natural death, sudden or protracted.
All at once he felt a strong pang of longing
and for all his labor, this was his payoff.
At last he was buried in a plot of dry land
and for all his toiling, this was his lot.
And so he foresaw his end from the beginning,
a life not worse than any other,
an ordinary death and a hasty burial.
Omens
When the glass drops
a splinter shoots,
and a piece of paper slips,
and something shifts or stirs,
and something splits from the proper frame
one must always be on guard.
Now I write and pause,
to think,
many sheets of paper got stuck in my throat.
I, if I may say so, am no longer I.
Im split, wasting fast.
A quiver in the air. The mould is missing.
Perhaps it is I whos dropping quickly.
82
And I refuse to believe it.

I simply refuse to see.
The Cat
Ido said to me: Men work outside,
and I leaned over and saw: a cat went by.
A mottled cat with gray and orange spots,
an unusual combination.
It went through the nettles
and quickly vanished,
sneaked past.
The leaves of the margosa tree,
not yet fully dense,
are dark green.
An un-historic morning
within the boundaries of home and yard.
Something like a light wind
utters among the leaves.
The yard in the east is already shaded.
In the apartment across, cheap ornaments
are clearly visible on the wall.
Were all mute.
The cat saved my life.
Ready Alert
Ill tell you the truth:
One can be content
that there are so many corners in a room
and a composition of colors
red, pink, dark green,
and a delicate lace curtain
over the small, melancholy window,
83
and a feeling of devotion

among the objects
even as they persist in remaining apart.
And this is all there is in the room
and how seemingly little
not even little that holds much
but plainly whats visible.
There are things I hide in my heart
to throw dust in peoples eyes.
And I tirelessly expect
with a groundless tenacity
that all this is but a drill
to preserve the strength
to preserve the readiness.
Lying Upon the Water

A smelly Mediterranean city
squats on the water,
her head between her knees
her body fouled with soot and trash.
Who would raise from the trash
a rotten Mediterranean city,
her feet covered with scabs,
her sons dealing knives
to one another.
And now the city has been ooded
with crates of grapes and plums,
cherries are displayed in the market
for the passersby.
The setting sun is as pink as a peach;
who could seriously loathe
a Mediterranean city doped
84
like a cow mooing in heat,

her walls Italian marble
and crumbling sand.
Clad in embroidered rags,
she harbors no motives,
no motives at all.
And the sea brims at her blind forehead
and the sun beams her way rays lled with compassion
as its fury subsides at setting.
And the pumpkins, cucumbers and lemons,
bursting with juice and color,
exhale over her a balmy fragrance
of summer perfumes.
And she is not deserving.
Not deserving of love or pity.
A foul Mediterranean city
how my soul became bound to hers.
As life goes on,
as life goes on.
But She Had a Son

for Rachel Melamed Eitan
An acquaintanceship that began in mid-winter
ripened at the end of spring.
A smiling woman, forbearing.
She had a son
who fell in battle.
She cooks and bakes,
holds a part-time job
at City Hall.
Lunch is always set on the table.
And all with a at refusal
to resign herself.
85
As is her way, as if placidly,

she may, all at once, halt the universe.
Its hard to tell what shes capable of.
Without actually saying so
she voiced a claim.
After all, a son was taken from her.
No way can she justify
this taking.
Who would dare tell her:
Its time now you washed your face,
be strong.
What was, was.
She departs on a very trying journey.
Its a vertiginous trek,
back and forth.
With her own hands she rakes coals underneath her,
deliberately heaps cinders over her body.
She is Rachel. Which Rachel?
The one who had a son,
and she tells him, day and night,
summer and winter, feasts and holidays,
Im Rachel, your mother.
Possessed of cognition and free will,
theres no comforting me.
Grand Days Have Gone by Her

How did it go?
Untypically, she was quick to recollect.
A vineyard didnt spring from the earth.
An orchard stood there,
sickly,
slow to blossom.
86
A walnut tree that bloomed failed to ripen.

As though some natural yielding element
were missing from the ground.
Hard green lemons.
A balding lawn.
A great calm.
In the west, the hedge grew wild
and naturally the honeysucker
(later named honeybird),
were it alive today,
would have been twenty already.
There were manhunts in the valley.
Fire in the brush.
The summer burned as usual in a hellish blaze,
the evening cast shadows with no relief.
Between death and death
they sang to her
the songs of Zion.
She wouldnt go to bed before dawn,
before a bird twittered.
In those years
she herself died
three or four times.
Not a denitive nal death,
but a kind of death throes.
Great yearnings gripped her
in the bosom of night,
mighty emotional throbs.
The years have their way of wreaking changes
hidden and secret.
It is simple for her to remember this.
Grand days have gone by her.
What a pity that now, so near the end,
she has suddenly lost the ability
to remain among the living.
87
A Mother Goes About

A mother goes about with a dead child in her belly;
this child hasnt been born yet.
When his day comes, the dead child will be born,
head rst, trunk and buttocks,
and he wont swing his arms,
wont cry a rst cry.
They wont slap his behind,
wont trickle drops into his eyes,
wont diaper him after washing the body.
He will not be like a live child.
And his mother wont be placid and proud after the birth,
will neither worry about his future,
nor wonder how she will provide for him,
whether she has enough milk, clothes,
whether she has room for another crib.
This child is a virtual saint,
he wasnt born even before he was born.
Hell have a small grave at the edge of the cemetery,
and a small memorial,
a modest marker.
And this is the life of the child
killed in his mothers womb
in January, 1988,
for political and security reasons.
The Tale about the Arab Who Died in the Fire

When the blaze caught his body it didnt happen gradually.
There was no prior bursting of heat,
nor a blast of choking smoke,
and no sense of a nearby room
one could escape to.
The blaze caught him instantly
this has no simile
peeled his clothes,
88
torched his esh.

The epidermal nerves were struck rst,
the hair fueled the blaze,
God, he yelled, theyre burning,
and thats all he could do in self defense.
The esh was already burning with the shacks boards,
which fed the blaze in the rst stage.
He no longer possessed comprehension;
the fueled blaze in the esh
numbed his sense of future,
and the memory of his family.
He was no longer connected with his childhood.
And he screamed without any mental brakes
and lost all relation with his kinsfolk;
he didnt ask for vengeance, deliverance,
didnt ask to see tomorrows dawn.
He only wished to stop burning,
but his own body sustained the ame.
He was as if bound and strapped
but he wasnt thinking about this either.
And he continued to burn with the vigor of his body
made of esh, marrow and sinew.
And he burned a long time.
And inhuman sounds emanated from his throat,
for numerous human functions had already ceased,
except for the pain the nerves conduct in electric currents
to the pain center in the brain.
And it didnt last more than one day.
And it is fortunate that his spirit surrendered on this day,
for he deserved to rest.
Lullaby
Theyll sing to you
your virtuous Ma and Grandma,
the fringe of Mas kerchief
brushing the blanket.
89
Theyll sing, Ma and Grandma,

an old wistful song.
In the dim enclave in Djibalia
they sat clasped together:
a broken father spitting blood,
and the fteen-year-old son
coiling himself like a hoop
around the crushed body
the remnants of his father.
Two lovers,
two love-birds,
their captors mocked them.
Ma and Grandma sing you a song
so you may sleep without harm, sweet child;
Rachel weeps for her children
with bitter tears. A grieving voice.
And youll grow up to be a man,
and the pain of Djibalia you wont forget,
and the misery of Shatti you wont forget,
and the villages of Betta and Hawara,
and Balata and Djelazoon,
for their outcry rose for many nights.
Train of Thought
Who is she to talk?
Who is she to talk?
What else has she got to say?
She has a twisted need to suffer.
And in our land such pretty landscapes:
vineyards hanging from the mountain ridge,
the shade of clouds on the plain,
and light,
and fenced-in lots.
And three olive groves as well,
uprooted as punishment.
And three old women, toothless.
90
Due to old age, what else?

Brutality is not the only viewpoint.
Then why, suddenly, on the pure Sabbath,
on the joyous Sabbath,
an image encroaches of the man they had beaten to death.
Him and his son you shall not put to death on the same day.
The blot of a light cloud
settled on the plain.
In Zichron Yaakov the wine vats burst
with the nectar of grapes.
And our barns, too, spill over with grain,
and the ravines overow with water,
and beneath the overturned stone
a scorpion crawls.
The song of nature.
And that Arab they beat to death.
Virtually pelted his esh.
But not in Zichron Yaakov,
and not in Mazkeret Batya.
These are veteran communities,
languid, blending in the scenery.
Who is she to talk?
Who is she to talk?
She is just looking for ways to suffer,
to say a bad word.
She is not one of us,
she doesnt see all thats good and beautiful in life.
She doesnt see us as we are.
We came to our homeland.21
Rina Slavin
Rina Slavin lies in bed all day,
pen and paper nearby,
21. A refrain in a popular pioneer song.
91
three cups of leftover tea and coffee,

a pillbox,
and two deodorants for variety.
She opens her eyes eagerly,
utterly burning toward a new day,
yet doesnt raise her body
from the bed.
Perhaps she is numbed,
perhaps lazy, or, in elegant speech,
indolent.
A small alarming clock is also near the bed
so if she wants to wake
there will be no setback.
Rina peers at the clock, realizes
that half the morning has already past.
And what about the remaining half?
And what about noon
and again the afternoon
and a little before dusk
and the glorious sunset so near her window
which she misses anyhow.
Rina Slavin waves a muscle-less limb,
icks away an ant, or a strand of hair
that spots the linen or the oor.
Her house is clean, even immaculate,
and the tickless clock leads its hands
near her bed or pillow.
For the life of her she can no longer
split and divide the times according to hours,
for she doesnt have time
in the ordinary sense of the word.
She holds a mad hope
to rise from the bed
and perform great deeds,
or just
rise and perform,
like Deborah the Prophetess,
92
like Miriam, Mosess sister,

but, like Michal, Davids wife,
she only gazes out the window,
contempt in her heart.
She is also torn by self and public
derision
and pilfers her days
without a ute or any other musical instrument.
Amid the forces of nature that wreck her
she dozes off
which is the best way of all
to swallow time,
to swallow time.
The Greenness of Leaves

It is the year nineteen-ninety
in the Western calendar.
Wild foliage rich with compassion lls the window
dotted with occasional, pink yellowish blossoms
like scattered omelet crumbs.
A big red ower doesnt bolt from the green.
A big ower is not to be seen.
The year nineteen-ninety
is not the year of large owers.
A blind of gaping slats is drawn over the foliage,
and over the blind a lacy fringed curtain.
Ive never had a worse year in my entire life
and the greenness of trees spills pity
like a maternal solution
containing articial mothers milk, calcium and minerals.
Dear, a year of green light and shade
a lacy curtain and a blind of gaping slats
is not to be termed a year of life.
In the year nineteen-ninety
life drained from me
as from the bodies of desert drifters
whose bodily uids have dried up
while waiting to be rescued.
93
A Private History
for Itzchak Livni
Nine words I said to you.
You said this and that.
You said: You have a child,
you have time, you have poetry.
The window bars were carved in my skin;
you wouldnt believe Ive endured this.
I really didnt have to,
humanly speaking.
On the Tenth of Teveth the siege began;
on the Seventeenth of Tammuz the city fell;
on the Ninth of Av the temple was destroyed.
I withstood all this alone.
A Beetles Life
A black beetle slowly makes her way.
You watch her and say: How ugly she is.
A hunchbacked body, tireless eyes,
shes arrived here from Pakistan
with no hidden motives.
Give the black beetle credit.
She came here to work, to aspire
for a bright short future
a beetles highest joy.
Dont harm her,
she beseeches your mercy
and creeps onward.
Deep in her silly heart
every beetle knows
you wont spare her,
you wont listen.
94
ASHER REICH
(b. 1937)
Asher Reich was born in Jerusalem and lives in Tel Aviv. He

studied philosophy and literature at Hebrew University and
began publishing in 1960. For many years, he was the coeditor
of Moznayim, the magazine of the Hebrew Writers Association.
He participated in the International Writing Program at Iowa
University, and his poetry is featured in numerous anthologies in
Israel and in Europe. He has published twelve volumes of poetry,
a volume of short stories, and a novel. His Selected Poems appeared
in 1986 and won the Bernstein Award from the Federation of
Israeli Publishers; it was subsequently published in French and in
German translations. His other awards include the Anne Frank
Poetry Award, the ACUM Award, and the Prime Minister Award.
The poems appearing here are from his collections Selected Poems
(1986), Works on Paper (1988), Fictitious Facts (1993), and Winter
Music (1996).
The History of My Heart

Like light I travel
through my loves
who fade
speedily
unawares. Real
95
time will not to be found in suns or clocks.

Time is the metaphysical pulse
of a human heart; the other cosmos teems
with creatures of cell-like shapes
a mysterious civilization
moves as it does around
the invisible sun.
Oh, my world lives and moves
in its natures: the emotional gravitation.
This is the history of my heart, lled with dates
of love: dark ages of humiliating
defeats. Melancholy kingdoms vanishing
in a renaissance of conquests and discoveries. The future spills
into the present like blood cleansing itself, like a regal solitude
which rises and falls and appoints itself ruler over me, again.
Fragments
1.
You and I and a brook.
2.
You and I go into the brook.
The brook changes
3.
You and I a brook.
What ows in me what goes through you
are we changed?
4.
The brook, as brooks do, longs for the ocean
and we, wet souls,
are extinguished from our place
are we the same brook?
96
5.
You and I are not in the same brook.
Sight deceives in brooks,
things are lit in the sun
you see me in other waters
I see you in a different light.
New York: First Swim

As usual, as in the beginning, it all began with water.
Max Ernsts blind swimmer
rose from the river, drenched with longing
for his life on land, eeing every
abyss of his time, as if absconding
his eternal waters. I watched as his centrifugal
body shook off plutonium in the water. I also saw
how the water thirsted for your mouth recoiling from it.
The entire island ran like a rumor. You, too,
ran. Your spirit, too, changed seasons
like the green nakedness of Central Park
which changed colors into autumn. Later,
we crossed the wailing Hudson to Jersey,
to the frozen future of the American dream.
New York: Second Swim

Through a lit tunnel under the river
we went back to Manhattan. The island was
wrapped in silver clouds. There we lost
the sounds of bread far from the land of honey.
There your stomach couldnt tolerate the sugary
A SHER R EICH
97
load of the citys pies.

In Macys you threw up. In Alexanders I bought
a pair of woolen long johns and got a long erection.
We felt such glass-lusts as tall
as the Twin Towers.
My face in the clouds was like an autumnal
sun in the Atlantic sky.
The eyeballs of my eyeballs lmed everything.
The tourist blood in us whirled delight, and still
craves soothing moments with books at Rizzolis.
Like the bears in the commercial you and I
owed with the human stream of the Marathon.
At night we strolled with Eliots cats
and all your fears were thoroughly eroded.
Requiem to a Dog in the Rain

A winter-haunted sky.
Icicles like stalagmites on the ground.
The highway slippery as an eel.
Injuries of rain
and a dog in a puddle at the side of the road.
Sounds of Bach blast from the radio. Oh, God Almighty.
One hand on the wheel and with the other I search in my pocket
to nd the name of the place: Stockdorf.
Cars zoom by honking
nervously. Potholes.
The car hops like a harried frog.
Another hours drive to Stockdorf.
The rain keeps falling.
Death embraces the dog.
Cars continue to honk.
98
Sights
1.
The wagon of Johann the neighbor
lies at the side of the road
like a freight that ran off the tracks.
Dark clouds bring to burial
the lady of the north sun.
Its so peaceful here: so this is the pure
stillness, not much unlike death.
2.
My lover sweeps leaves in the yard.
Every morning the days of corrosion
set upon us like smoke without ame.
In the nearby stable a cow is giving birth.
A peasant woman yawns into the milk bucket.
My eyes in the window, my feet tethered
to a sagging squeaking wood oor.
On his cart, still as a picture,
an old man leans on his rake
as if it were a spine.
My lover still sweeps leaves in the yard.
Summer is sunk in the deep.
Mud
Hogs in the muddy
yard. I hear
the slaughterhouse sounds
in their guts. Skies of puddles
above the village. Heavy boots of a peasant
A SHER R EICH
99
and another peasant silently ruminating

on the upcoming harvest. I see
their mud-ploughed elds.
As if in a transxed calm a tractor
sits in the mud. A cart dozes off. Cows
dream. Near the fence a truck loaded
with large sacks of potatoes.
It stopped raining. I walk out
to the evening puddles strewn with frogs
like so many stars.
Nights
First night
On the roof of the house
a pond fell from the sky
our room was ooded.
We swam in the dark
Second Night
The tiles were changed.
The house is warm
sheltered
a sort of challenge.
And Third
The light of the house created the night
to surround us with good sleep.
In the dream animals followed us
and only the snow falling in a white darkness
completed our blind sleep.
100
Mornings
1.
Like you,
the womb of the night also
shuts down.
The stars, Gods embryos,
fade as if in a silent transmigration
to another world.
2.
In a dream we peeled stars
like potatoes.
With the innite gaze of the stuffed fox
on the wall
we woke up
like survivors of a disaster.
3.
From bed I heard the bread
oven sound a dark tone.
The scent of autumn is like the odor of fresh paint.
The tree, its sadness
cast over the yard, stirs
with little help from the wind.
Here the occasional sun doesnt raise
its voice to the world.
4.
To your surprising body I sailed
with waking hands.
Quietly we whispered from our shadows,
they sighed with us
like the mass of trees in the wind.
A SH ER R EICH
101
The door opened like a generous smile. Feverish

I walked out. Smoke followed me.
Light and air carried snow akes to my face
and the day glowed from afar.
5.
From my window a cow seemed
like a dark bleating stain
approaching the house.
Dusk smoke still rises
from the chimney. Above the house
a half-charcoaled cloud ripens.
The landscape drips perpetual ash.
6.
In this light my hair grew gray.
The trees in the yard are clad
in white robes.
In the forest snow drops from trees
and the forests clearing lies on its back,
patiently waiting
for its green skin.
7.
The mornings too are tired of fog
weary of rain.
The poet Sarah came to visit,
wearing on her nger
the Heide river.
I opened the window, my eyes touched the river.
8.
Clouds shaped like Holstein cows
squat in the sky.
Boys on a tractor scatter
bundles of hay.
102
Im still listening to the winds snores

in the dim route
of my dreams ight
in and out of bed
Im brimming with domestic hours.
The Music of the Cosmos

The winter outlasted the priest.
The janitor found him in church
hanging like a sh behind the altar.
His wife told that on his last night he dreamt
how in the middle of the sermon on John the Baptist
his skull split open and strips of sky emerged
with demons that looked like swine. To the sound of an organ
his gure swiftly changed and wings sprang from his back.
And when Rudolf the priest ew out of the church
he saw the red Hydra with her seven heads
and ten horns, and on her back, stark naked, rides
the great whore of Babylon, already drunk with the blood of
saints,
whipping her whip of snakes across Hydras mane,
calling out to Rudolf to come join her to redemption,
to the second coming of father Jesus.
The priest heard an abysmal harmony calling to him
perhaps the music of the spheres sounded in his ears
which he followed up from the earth to the stars.
At our last meeting he spoke a lot about the sound of time
sheer as air and owing like water, about Pythagoras and Kepler
und die Musik der Kosmos.
A SH ER R EICH
103
A Recurring Memory
In a night wailing winter,
a strain of violins.
With all the leisure on my hands
I move an old chest
to the other end of the room.
Now the music heard is just
the motion of articles in the chest
and the scraping bass of shifting.
The windowpanes, too, beat the echo
of old sounds from my youth,
from a different country, now moving
like objects.
Fence
For a long winter I watched
the fence around the house.
A long winter was registered
in this fence that changed looks and shades
suffered frost-bite
was covered with snow
and remained standing.
The ashtray on the window sill
choked again and again with cigarette butts.
The winter grew rusty with rst lights
of spring. Green pervaded the eye of the fence.
Worms emerged from the wooden eyelets to the sun
and a bird alighted on its perch.
I logged the bird, too.
104
Photograph
From the dark room in my brain
a sound.
Someone in there develops
a negative of my very
hidden
thoughts. The acid trickles
out
through
the key
hole. In the wet photograph
I can see a man
thinking a poem about his bitter life.
He looks exactly like me,
meets me as a muse on a dark
street, invites himself into my home,
settles in my darkness. I awake to leave him
all my negative assets,
binding myself to his fate.
Yet, before I have time to escape,
someone suddenly pounds
on the front door.
A Different Sensation
Poetry will steer me to another recollection
a different sensation: years later
your image suddenly before me
like a luminous landscape of yourself
rising from the commotion of the street.
In the unvanquished light of the sun
we met like two birds from a different summer.
A SH ER R EICH
105
You looked up and saw your son

with the face of a heathen
the eyes of other gods.
What can I do, son, to bring you back?
For a moment the sun became the warmth of the womb
and the face that wore pain and drew me in
was my face before I was born.
All at once the world was different. I knew
what I had to know, I recalled all the possible worlds.
And so we stood in the street
crowded by sensation
contemplating our time unhurriedly.
A dog set his gaze on us, growling an impasse:
To bark or go past
and the day was still imagined
and the light held her warm palm
in my hand writing this poem.
Odors
1.
She waits for me.
She sits facing me, looking at me
with big eyes, sad as a Jews
and the forbearance of twilight. She waits.
Odors from the kitchen come
and ll the room, her nose
and mine.
Yet she still waits.
I am the one who controls her needs.
2.
Is it patience or
boldness? When she sits
106
there, still waiting to get me out

to the nearby eld, in the dark air
laden with scents of hay and dung.
3.
Grasses sniff her all around
and a smiling breeze pleasantly wags
with its nose that carries the odors of the village.
I stand and my thoughts travel
and she runs runs runs
to her green universe of cascading odors.
A tree stands alert to a rustle.
The breeze, too, stops here for a moment,
breathless. A clean serenity vaults
like a cats back at a moment of danger.
I smoke. She pees.
I whistle to her and she comes
painting delight with the wag of her tail
her ears wild
with the copious listening to all thats tiny and still.
A SH ER R EICH
107
HEDVA HARECHAVI
(b. 1941)
Hedva Harechavi was born in kibbutz Degania Bet and lives in

Jerusalem. An artist and a poet, she graduated from Bezalel Art
Academy in 1967 and is widely exhibited in Israel and abroad.
She has published ve volumes of poetry and has won numerous
awards, among them the Prime Minister Award (twice) and the
Levi Eshkol Award. She has participated in many international
poetry festivals, and her work has been extensively anthologized,
translated into Russian, German, Arabic, Macedonian, and English.
The poems appearing here are from her 1985 collection I Only
Want to Tell You.
Tonight I Saw
Tonight I saw her fragments
and the birds pulling
her hair
and the birds resting upon her back
and the birds pacing across her face
and the birds stepping
on her ngertips
and the birds perching on windowsills
and the birds draping her voices
with blood, grasses, and sand.
Tonight I saw her fragments
and there was nothing like her
smashed to pieces.
108
108
When She Goes Out Alone

Nights when she goes out alone
what does she want.
To hunt lions?
Drill the ground?
Hear unearthly voices?
Receive warning signals from the sea?
What does she want.
To feel human beings moment to moment?
(A late-night caf reminds her of thorns.)
To balance water briey in her hands?
To ll the sun with strange fowl?
What does she want.
Gentleness has no power.
Thats why she walks on tiptoe.
Sometimes she commands convoys
of red dogs
she has painted
and thinks shes their escort.
Sometimes she sits in a pink ute
and thinks shes asking for help
she needs air
what does she want.
Imagine, Carving the Sky

And I wanted to tell Batya this,
only to Batya Batya Batya,
and Id say: Batya Batya Batya
so that Batya, and others as well,
I mean, with such ease she collects
last remnants of consciousness.
HEDVA H A R ECHAV I
109
I wonder: Is this how you collect remnants?

And the sky advanced on the garden,
the stepladder.
I ask myself how she would look were she
to sit on the knees of the small window-cleaner,
her head up in the sky, yes,
now, too, at times, now, too, regardless of the time,
now is the time to carve the sky.
Imagine, carving the sky with a pencil,
and I wanted to tell Batya this,
only to Batya Batya Batya,
and Id say, Batya Batya Batya
where is the calm in Batyas eyes,
dancing at the top of a skyscraper she has drafted,
dancing with unconscious snails,
dancing Now, that jazz music gently steers motion
dancing At rst there was reality. Now that I have reality.
Is it she? Perhaps, yes, it is she.
Perhaps. It is she, yes.
Perhaps.
It is she: throat, neck, shoulders, toenails,
and the sky approached the corner,
behind the door,
clinging to the pipes
near the steel sink,
droning sluggishly.
A profusion of sky here, I muse,
it pleases me that columns of shrieks
are meticulously grouped
across the page. Also,
the applause. Also
that which drives the small window-cleaner.
That which drives the small window-cleaner
continuously.
And I wanted to tell Batya this,
only Batya Batya Batya
and Id say, Batya Batya Batya
but Batya wouldnt come.
110
When the Music Subsided

When the music subsided and next to me longings
growled like lions
and
not
not
not
I
a
a
a
had nothing on earth:

God
town where I could rise, anew, to life,
childs dream
Like Back Then When I Was Escorted

The point of lucidity oats like a feather.
One woman is crushed and she is still a woman
removed by three centimeters only
from herself.
Only one eye is shut.
Only one eye is drawn
to the news (commentary)
by Adi Raban.
My heart is a drunken forest
wisely locked.
A night-ower listens.
All thats dear to me weeps
and so the whole of creation, and the shame,
the shame the shame,
like back then when I was escorted, at times
by silence and holiness
and God God God
and Elishas new sounds
God God God
and Elishas new sounds
Like in the Passing Year

Back then she was like a binging preying beast
her eyes always open
HEDVA H A R ECHAV I
111
roving after dogs straying

in bushes and weeds.
A somber light hummed in every room.
Familiar rumors followed the rumors.
A rose ooded a rose
and together in the dark sang
in a thousand voices.
And all the voices for an instant were voices
that all voices depend upon
powerless
and voices trickled to all corners
new voices hid from familiar ones
and suspect voices rang to known ones
and voices from the heart were torn to pieces
and the other voices wept there
at the funeral
among the leaves.
And so all at once there was no Providence on earth
no sign of Providence to be found
in the skies
Like a Binging Preying Beast

The light in the room grew bleak.
From the corner she measured, measured precisely,
the extent of her fears.
A pink cloud drifted across her knee, singing.
A peculiar sound of a strange weeping
spread through her nerves.
A gentle glimmer spills from her eyes.
Commiserating mercenary angels
stroke her head.
For a litter of daisies, a whore plays
the drum of God.
112
This is the hour when

even a volcano dips its head and weeps
behind some weed
and all the worlds wisdom resembles
a grain of dust, drained and bitter,
again and again the same commotion of sounds.
The same whirlpool. The same blunders.
Back then she was naked.
She was a thousand years, she was one.
She was like a crimson knife
she was like the lustrous bird who lost
for a while the planet earth
cautiously embracing a similar bird
until she became anew like a binging preying beast.
A Very Cheerful Girl

As I say
she was always a very cheerful girl always
a little cheerful girl
and summers
wed put her in the park
on the ground
under trees
on the rug
and she had a dog-leash
here and a dog-leash there
and the spirit of God moved upon the park
and yearling lambs roamed from all parts
As I say
she was always a cheerful child
how cheerful she was
a girl with good manners
who never made you worry
HEDVA H A R ECHAV I
113
a thoughtful girl, considerate, balanced,

dependable. At times she would sit in a corner,
eyes shut, smiling,
and it was evening and morning
and all things were gentle
with tenderness with love
just imagine, a neat innocent child
playing on the ground
and the entire earth sings for her
as I say
she was always a happy child
a very special girl
lively, sweet and even pretty
she had a heart of gold, I mean
so adaptable to change
she never cried, I mean
she never did that
with others
never broke toys
(only once or twice)
never muddled her speech
no, it didnt seem as if
she needed me.
Well, so she didnt.
(Even though Im her mother
even though she was always
my little daughter.)
Maybe I didnt know her
but I was always decent to her.
All right, not very close,
but I cared about what happens to her.
This is the beginning.
This is the background.
These are the details.
These are the facts.
She was everything we expected and hoped for:
a very cheerful girl.
114
Go, Go Wherever You Go, But Go

Youre after a man who doesnt exist.Ruth
Youre after a man who doesnt exist
the man you want doesnt exist
it is so, it is so, that man doesnt exist
so what are you doing with a man who doesnt exist
I say and say and say
and you repeat repeat repeat
for what for whom
it concerns you not me
what happens to you doesnt happen to me
your dream is not mine
the knowledge the knowledge
you dont understand concepts
you gamble all the time
whos a dog whos a God
the changes you go through, the changes the changes,
suddenly you oat behind a kingdom
of smiles
suddenly you freeze
because of some imprecision
suddenly youre weak: the earth
is torn apart and no
sign of life
suddenly you disappear
and when you understand that no
you want very much
the impossible becomes a target
reality sounds like a joke,
an offshoot of some other joke.
(I see a picture
of some woman
feeble
awed
out of control
with a childs excessive aggression.)
Your belligerence stubbornness wails and breakdowns
HEDVA H A R ECHAV I
115
overblown, so much
crumbles, God God and God
again, only mercenary angels stand by your side.
Only dark music could depict you.
Lines of confusion powerfully sack you
where where are you running barefoot in the dark
how far youve gone beyond your limits
how far youve over-spilled your bounds
and life life and those
who dont heed your wishes.
Over there all is naked broken undone
and here you cry like a newborn.
Go, go wherever you go, but go
to someone who exists.
Its up to you, too.
Up to the door.
Up to all the buttons.
What Im capable of is not a model
for orderly broadcast
a thousand times already
Ive been telling you the same things, same things.
I tell you,
and tell you again,
youre after a man who doesnt exist
the man you want doesnt exist
that man doesnt exist
so what do you want
with a man who doesnt exist.
Already Night, Already Day

My mother is a hooker without a dagger
her corpse a body without a shield.
A dead power.
When she deceived me the rst time
I went numb. Voices laughed.
A deadly smoke spread like a sea of rust
116
across my forehead, my eyes, my neck,

around my hands and feet.
Every sliver of thought capable of knowing
froze and wept
froze and wept.
(At times, when Id smile
like an automaton, a shape resembling me
would soar and crawl soar and crawl
but there was a lawn and a mountain in the lawn
and a garden in the mountain and darkness
in the garden and blood in the darkness
and a white boat going berserk in the blood
a boat I drew
to please
no one.
At times, when I was nished off at once
like some old bitch.)
Now, each of my gestures is fully transmitted
now, each sound I utter is reported
now, I am absent,
watching black stray cats
I hear between my ngers.
My dead power,
mother, mother, mother,
I spit on common sense
I no longer care about your lthy death
in the damp hole.
One thing matters to me: your eyes,
with which red did you paint your eyes.
People ask about you.
I have to hurl a word or two.
It is evening already, night, day, noon already,
I want wings, wings
I want wings
and to y
HEDVA H A R ECHAV I
117
For Ruth
And each beast had a white garden of its own
and each beast had a sun radiant at night
and each beast had islands of gold
in a sea of miracles
and a blood-oozing music quietly
gathered among the leaves
And all the beasts growled as drunks
dancing, singing, cheering
seeing what they saw
stirring what they stirred
And only one beast was devoured
by longing, and all night
gods and angels spit at her
and spit
Here Everything
Here everything
is unclear
doesnt agree
with anyones reason
Im about to burst
distances kill me
gradually
and all I can tell you
about years past
118
about
about
about
about
about
longings
wholeness
crumbling
dust and ashes
sweet calm
and how a mob of saints

arrived late
in the evening or night or morning but
as soon as they touched the ground
I saw remarkable voices
gathering in the sky
and sights of bliss
came to me
lay on my knees
slept in my lap
and I had great perceptive powers
powers I never knew before
I didnt wish to speak in the tongue
of cruel cravings
but I spoke and spoke and spoke
only your irrational desire
to relieve me
of too many imperfections
will expire
when you see these things
coming to pass
HEDVA H A R ECHAV I
119
NURIT ZARHI
(b. 1941)
Nurit Zarhi was born in Jerusalem and lives in Tel Aviv. She
studied literature and philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv and
has worked as a journalist and a literary critic. A poet, she also is
one of Israels best-known authors of childrens books, several of
which have appeared in translation in Europe and India. She has
published eight volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories,
and a collection of essays. She has received every major Israeli
award, including the Prime Minister Award and the Bialik Award.
The poems appearing here are from her collections The Fish
(1987), Village of Spirits (1994), and Hypnodrom Hotel (1998).
*
For they are at the center of my life
two girls a man a woman
Why should I be afraid
each thing has only four corners
Full of intents I smile
almost proffer owers
plan to sweep the accumulating dust
But she knows everything about me
and so screeches with the sound of shifting beds
120
120
Beyond the wall the girls in drooping socks

are smooth butteries
light as if happy
And grandma-crow divines in the thicket of the pine
from generation to generation to generation
*
The rain reveals the hidden names of leaves
my heart warm as if washed in blood
a new season love
cruising in our tiny heart
as if in an ocean
never touching
If it were up to me rst thing
Id give up on longing as on sickness
but then I become even sicker
all I can do is depart from myself
through a ring of re, forcibly awake
from dream into dream
And when this happens instantly I recall
the hidden name of my heart
as if it were an orphan. No, even this is too revealing,
Id have to name it a civilian in a long raincoat
when in fact its cauterized name is a mad child
no one would want in my place
with the self-respect of a wet bird
in a land where all must appear strong and beautiful
More than anything I want to heed
the true tablet of its commandments
but what can I do it wants me to expose
myself to all show whats lacking
clearly it drags me to destruction
N U R IT Z A R H I
121
and I put it to sleep: Sleep sleep

witless heart, all or at once
you may achieve in death only
*
Forgive my outburst, Sir,
I think I was shot.
I leaned, mistakenly, on love.
But who cares for precision
when they kill off presidents and children.
And you suggest I dont take it to heart.
Because, as it is, theyve knocked on my door more than once.
Im cautious since you always hit your target,
Im sure to keep my eyes wide open.
Same as the pigeon who laid an egg
on my windows ledge,
and the next day nothingnot even fragments.
I understand why you shot me, Sir.
Just another dream that wont disturb you
as you fall asleep.
Baby Blues
And so, quietly,
eyes shut,
babies drop into the world,
like rain falling in the dark
from a gigantic hand into shafts,
into a spiders tent, a cold apple.
Silence in the universe; the babies sleep
in translucent beehives.
Strange to the morning, eyes bluish with darkness,
they grope with smooth ngers,
122
warm-lipped to guzzle time.

A moment and another they stretch and yawn,
with appled arms, sugared teeth,
they bathe in milk. In love. In ne sand.
But who weeps in the universe,
what do I hear, bitter wails,
shriller than a dogs whine, a seagulls cry.
Below the highways sobs are heard;
no one will ever get to sleep.
A chorus sings in the street.
Babies, come and eat the nourishing meal.
And the babies emerge from all the drawers,
riding a cows neck, a crane, a crate in the river.
But the wails continue, seeping
like water under shut doors.
This is the baby, where is it buried.
Where did I put it, where did I forget
the baby without water or air.
Come to the table, the food is getting cold.
But how to swallow with the voice in the throat.
Open, open, tree trunks, rusty tin cans,
graves that have never been plundered.
Listen, where is it buried,
where did I put it, where did I forget
the baby without water or air.
Silence in the universe.
You no longer know why, or who.
Me me, a voice is heard from the stone.
This is the baby, like the lmy spine of a leaf.
Lean over and look, let it drink, eat
if anythings left
N U R IT Z A R H I
123
The Marked Ship

Theyve plucked the feathers off the goose
then stuck them back on
now let it y.
And it ies, to impossible heights,
to the non-existent continent,
a land existing only because I couldnt leave it.
Who was it that fed us the rst slice
from the empty palm,
the one we cleaved to as if to water.
No wonder the bounds of our body drift
more so than fog.
And upon them I mount the foggy face of your love.
Im searching, what am I searching for
the bounds of body drifting toward the right season.
The stork with its beak, crimson as an anemone of fear,
crosses the line of heights
and the eye dispels it into cloudy stripes.
Wave after wave fear descends.
Is it possible to live this long
with no respite from time?
Summer and winter and again summer and winter
without the appearance of the face with the speaking body
with the mouth that decrees the bodys theme.
Quiet, no doubts allowed here.
These belong to the morning,
like the music that sets the north on the gnawed heart
and continues to feed on it.
Once upon a time we were kids
but of course it is all a lie.
124
Convincing Herself Shes a Picture

Convincing herself shes a picture
she endeavors to eat with her mouth shut
and with an eye that sweeps a bluish landscape behind
her
she traces its movements.
Look, here is Venice,
exposed in its bluish, moth-eaten light.
No, its Berlin, with its toothy roofs,
exposing the mouth of madness.
Its enough that he turns his head
toward her and so turns into a cloud.
To her surprise, the picture keeps being drawn behind his
back,
it even multiplies.
She adopts the demeanor of the onlooker,
she must simulate the manner of his withdrawal.
From the core of her strength
branches swerve into the eye
the sound of the sea swells.
This is how she seizes the missing dimension.
Behind the landscape behind the eye
towers shift, the forest crosses the face.
Here one can no longer shout: Stop.
Here, consistently, one can lose it all.
Therefore she lets her eyes fall,
like glass balls at the foot of the picture,
in whose windows the snow has been piling
and the telephone keeps ringing and no one picks up.
N U R IT Z A R H I
125
Nights22
1.
As I sit before you,
and matter and non-matter it in a muddle above my head,
and the body, like a spent jelly-sh,
spills onto poles joined together in nobodys heart,
how can I concede that we all must enter and exit
through shut doors, that, unfortunately,
you cant replace the story,
you must replace the life.
Above the broken land letters oat
like day-angels on their wings,
jostle me to walk around the abyss,
which remains torn from the jaw of my home.
Like that dear monkey in the store,
pissing a sparkling shower,
never losing the mastery to aim.
2.
Turn me into shadow,
you, with the horses blinders over the eyes,
and Ill wait for you with the clammy ngers of moss,
and when the listener will question what is and what is not,
and whether the is is but a lie the dead tells himself,
what will I say having lost already
the lips of substance? That a large hand
has tried more than once
to weed me out, and that despite the spray of nectar
across my lids, each hour of the night requires
a slight push on my part to let it pass?
That darkness sweeps my rooms from the street,
from the antennae-skewered roofs,
drowning in the golden familial scene?
It is clear that from every direction
the opposite direction is a dream,
that we are responsible for our dreams
as for our childrens names
22. Part of a sequence of nine nights.
126
and for the bitter knowledge

that only love can sweeten you to yourself.
3.
Like winter gazelles
emerging from the forest to lick the salt,
I train a hesitant tongue
across your soul enclosed like a stone
underwater. You hear, it sings,
the song that stirs my thoughts,
but even if I rein it
to a chariot of parrots
I wont be able to tear from my mouth
the taste of loss.
I know already the absolute avor of the sickness of death,
that while the faint grips the ledge
the mouth keeps pulling at the vocal chords.
If only I could shut my tongue from knowing
that it is you behind my lids,
but I wont risk growing weary.
4.
Like those who polish a hollow diamond
I hone the anticipation for you
until the edges grow thin.
My elements are sorrow and time,
or longing,
squatting like a toad across the heart.
Naturally, Id like to give it back to you,
or seek an ear that will rid me of it
through the tongue, equal myself to myself
or to the level of the earth, but it seems
Id have to swallow it to give birth to it again
as the alchemist does; the universe doesnt exist,
not even in the least, a phantasm,
like what church-bells chisel in the air,
and it is us, the deluded, who while pointing
the cosmic nger against us,
without knowing its exact nature,
we create love.
N U R IT Z A R H I
127
5.
If this is death, let it last forever,
our voices go round in space;
from there I watch my body pull downward,
is it my body that withstood
such peculiar deaths.
Know that its memory is shorter than its aches.
Even objects, their fact is more lasting.
Here is the desk I picked at the fair.
The one I never liked
still stands in my room, nal as a mountain.
A multitude of cups and glasses, those that crossed
with me the thresholds of matrimony.
Childrens lips sealed in milk, kitchen shelves,
one will always remain to follow me like a lamb,
and even though this body is mine,
nothing ties us together but weariness.
Lightly
Lightly, like painted sh
going back to the river,
the wrong path I chose in the dream
winds me around my neck, and round again,
like a scarf, brilliant in its hues of error
as if I were not assigned a body,
as if tree-leaves are not made of air.
And if the girl I let sleep under my tongue
should rise, my pleated past
would dissolve in the air.
Lightly, as if the one whose body
is about to be snatched wont let go
like that son, on account of his fathers fright,
conrmed the angel in his eyes
more so than a shadow validating the visible,
a gate will open, creaking, at the bottom of fear.
128
Stone
How deep pain breaks,
as the feet simply step on the hard ground of the lane.
On both sides of the street buildings
and in them all the people still alive
rewarded for having loved no more
than being loved, no less.
This is sanitywhen love comes
to offer a bed, a chair,
sustain and raise it like a pet
(a lionor a cockatoo).
Treetops are smothered, sparrows return to their window ledge.
Is true love measured by the small coin of anguish,
or is it the one which adhered to the oor, the walls.
In my house, the oor and walls are made of oor and walls.
Only in my presence do they reveal what they can turn into a void.
Except for a few plants, and half-scribbled notes,
I grow only stone.
Day and night it tells me:
Be a oor, walls, dont disclose more
than crows in their puzzling cries.
This time youll love intelligently,
from this place, no, from that one.
Lock your mouth, your head, the nerve centers.
Lock the vision, the hope, be sane, be a stone.
N U R IT Z A R H I
129
MEIR WIESELTIER
(b. 1941)
Meir Wieseltier was born in Moscow, arrived in Israel in 1949,

and lives in Tel Aviv. He studied at Hebrew University, and in
1982 he held an International Writers Fellowship at the University
of Iowa. He has published ten volumes of poetry and is the
cofounder of the literary magazine Siman Kriah. In the early
1960s, he was at the center of a group known as the Tel Aviv
poets. He translates poetry from the English, French, and Russian
and has translated four of Shakespeares tragedies, as well as novels
by Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, and E. M. Foster. His work
has been translated into nineteen languages, and collections of his
poems have appeared in the United States and in Europe. His
awards include the Elite Jubilee Literary Award, the Bialik Award,
and the 2000 Israel Award for Literature. The poems appearing
here are from his collections Exit to the Sea (1981), The Concise
Sixties (1984), and Warehouse (1995).
A Naive Painting
A world is created in the shape
of a backyard in the South of Tel Aviv.23
A tired eucalyptus represents the third day,
a hungry cat, the fth.
23. A mostly impoverished area in Tel Aviv.
130
130
The Almighty on the right in the image of an old

Bucharan man in clean underwear,
addressing the virgin Daughter of Israel,
a Yemenite girl of fteen with a tape-cassette
on the terrace across the street.
He says: Wont you turn off the music
on the day the Temple was destroyed?
The Ninth of Av is a mourning day for the Jews
since time immemorial.
And what does Yemima say?
She doesnt say.
She turns up the volume.
To Be Continued
The war is the extension of the policy
and South Lebanon is the extension of Upper Galilee;
therefore it is only natural that a country
will make war in Lebanon.
Youth is the extension of childhood
therefore nothing is more natural than children and boys
shooting each other in Lebanon.
Burial is the extension of the Rabbinate
therefore the military Hevra Kadisha24
will dig fresh graves in Lebanon.
The news media is the extension of prattle
therefore the papers thoughtfully consider
the feats of the war in Lebanon.
24. The rabbinical burial society, the only one authorized to bury Jews in Israel.
M EIR WIESELT IER
131
Poetry is the opposite of talk

in Lebanon and in the Upper Galilee.
Therefore what is said is as if it werent said
and we shall yet go to war in Lebanon.
4/2/78
Condolences
to the memory of A.N.
Later is too late
later he is dead.
You havent yet stopped
to enumerate his afictions
on the ngers of one hand.
Later is too late.
First grimaces in his memory
wont do much good.
Thats how it is, each eats
from his bowl of soup. Peers at the next table,
orders a meatball. In the meantime, he is dragged
through the indistinct house
that was his indistinct house.
Time is always shorter
than you thought. When you had time to think.
Later the dust rises
from the cemeterys parking lot.
A Moving Electric Message

At the end of Independence Day 1972
a small plane rose
in the evening sky of Tel Aviv
and across its belly it ran
132
a moving electric message:

For health and pleasure eat a lot of chicken
Each meal a bliss with the delis of the coop
In a small caf
on Dizzengoff between Nordau Boulevard
and the Northern police station
(still ablaze with a Menorah and a battery of lights)
people sat as in a minyan
and watched TV
and in between one lyric and the next
sipped a last sip of coffee
before sleep.
All is quiet in the neighborhood,
last nights great fuss is over with,
all returned to their places in the expected speed:
the customer to the caf, the kids home,
the small ags to the closet, and the worry to the heart;
the two regular prostitutes to Levinsky Street
and the alarm clock to six.
On darkened verandas
stand and weigh the night
a man and a woman in pajamas, in their fties.
A couple of feet separate them
yet they dont speak
or exchange a glance,
as if not one tongue
is spoken in the land.
Oh, the great Tel Aviv,
a dark city as though celebrating
a strange holiday of peoples droning gibberish:
Oh television,
Oh buses,
Oh cabs,
Oh Jews.
M EIR WIESELT IER
133
Only in Hebrew
Only in Hebrew beautiful
rhymes with coffee,
a doctor with a baker, and so
poetry will break down on mats,
facing the sun, becoming
a myriad of trembling pumpkin seeds.
Poetry will turn white on at roofs,
will wane in the soft breeze
to a faint sheen, reminiscent
of human bones.
My Wisdom
Hommes de lavenir souvenez-vous de moi
Je vivais lpoque ou nissaient les rois
Tour tour ils mouraient silencieux et tristes
Et trois fois courageux devenaient trismegistes25
Guillaume Apollinaire, Vendemiaire (Alcools, 1913)
The whole of my wisdom contracts to the bulk of a y on a
bright window-pane,
what were mountains and vales are but a scratch on glass.
A lion roared?
The grazing herds probably heard
but didnt bolt away,
just stamped their feet and dropped their gaze
to the shell of parched earth.
25. Men of the future please remember me

I lived in an age when kings were done with
One by one they died off sad and silent
So brave they became necromancers
134
To the sound of the shofar

one limping goat
goes back to the pen.
I dont see visions,
only clothespins.
The bang I hear is the sound of a drop of water
on tin.
And a mousey voice squeals:
Go, prophesy,
hurl yourself over the cliff
and continue walking.
Cheese
We live in a difcult time when
its hard to write about the basics
like a kiss or eating cheese.
Not that it was ever easy, and really
they are so few, so rare in fact,
in every generation if you blow off the dust,
the pages that arent clutched in the bony ngers
of theology, ideology,
or even
the wild desire for eternal life,
for the afterlife of spirit or page
yes, thats the poets wooden leg,
the seasoned hope
that the elusive paper will bury the bronze.
And the cheese buries nothing,
the small cheese, soft, a most tting noun
to illustrate the adjective spoiled.
Not to mention the kiss, that even
to seal it in a square
or in a triangle of being, as with cheese,
M EIR WIESELT IER
135
you can only presume,

so absolutely it is fused
with the motion that preceded it,
with the gesture that came after,
with the slackening of the bodies.
It has no ego, even its shape
is intimated only
in the gymnastics of neck and torso,
the cranes of the kiss,
and yet it explodes the groin,
while the real kiss
is depicted in the fervent hidden furor
taking place in a thousand
blood vessels in the body.
Therefore poets forsook the cities and ed
and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.26
The Bible in Pictures II

But one day a great Bible sailed
in my dream as a black ship
turning every which way
as if directionless in mid-ocean.
I approached it, saw
passengers and sailors cast about
as if they had fallen asleep where they stood,
tumbled in surprising positions,
frozen in a dancers bow.
When I advanced even closer,
I saw they werent stirring,
only roaches still moved
across their faces,
in the folds of their clothes,
26. Alludes to I Samuel 31, 7.
136
those same roaches that seemed to me

like columns of live letters.
The sea, as if dozing with them,
looked like a muddy puddle
almost yellow, the blue
drained and faded.
The dome of the sky blazed above
in a white-hot gray,
but it wasnt hotter than usual
and I saw a quiver upon the water
little shes darting to and fro.
Burning Holy Books

Holy books, my friend said in anger,
theres no such thing. Books,
books: let them discuss
books with us.
The night was hot.
At noon the light
strips the room, and things are clear:
across the holy well afx
a sheer grid: from here well inspect it
closely; well observe a ssured holy
beyond the grate:
iron or mathematical lust.
And so, will it seem less
holy? Evening descends.
It will be a mistake,
all our own.
But the grid must be placed. Courageously,
cautiously. Its night already, time to preserve
the piece of holy junk.
M EIR WIESELT IER
137
The 19th Century: Nohant, June 76

She coiled with pain
terrible pain
as if a monstrous corkscrew
were deep in her intestines. Her eyes,
dark, beautiful, warm
as roasted chestnuts, opened for moments
and read in the eyes of the specialist doctor
the inevitable inscription:
George Sand 18041876
(Just dont let them pee their pants or call the priest.)
Later she glanced at a letter from Flaubert.
The incorrigible fool, again hes involved
in a ludicrous attempt to salvage
the failing business of Commanville,
the neer-do-well husband of Caroline.
Ah, the gloomy familial perversion
of the great solitaire.
And despite it all, hes also writing
a new story (in which you will note
your direct inuence) a story of a simple heart.
She knew she could never
sit again at the table, whet the nib, incline,
rouse his phlegmatic heart with an ink infusion,
thank him for the gesture, caress his amiable, noble
silliness. She turned onto her side
with great pain, reached
for the nightstandshe still has the strength
to tell him a few words on the telephone.
But then the pain returned
with renewed intensity: she remembered:
this medium hadnt been made available yet.
138
The Lost Uncles

And the last shot
of the quart bottle
you downed without me.
The embroidered tablecloth
began to crumble, the aunts face
turned yellow, she is fading.
Only the empty bottle
is crystalline as new. Grandpas phylacteries
were given to some other old man.
Even your voices
Ive forgotten. I remember
dark eyebrows, almost
a stare. In a dream I was commanded
to bear seventy sons
to be whipped like dogs.
The Fowl of the Air

The paper dinghy was tossed into the puddle
and the lake lled with birds.
The bird plucked her unnecessary wings,
tore her beak and licked the blood
of the open wound, new lips. At last, she said,
Ive arrived. The odor of scorched grass,
remnants of thorns, a baked earth, the faint trickle
of water in body temperature. The dull glow
in the haze is the sun, said the bird.
Ill get to work, we must build a city
and a tower, its head in mid-air.
M EIR WIESELT IER
139
The Flower of Anarchy

The anarchic ower gave off a wonderful fragrance,
it gleamed in my youth from bios and books
and with a handmade lighter with the hazards of hope
I offered it to you and the world.
The world bit my hand,
but we kissed.
The ower rose from the blood and death machine
beautiful and right like a daydream,
it resembled you, and you got prettier every day.
When it feigned immortality, you shook with fear and laughter.
I held you,
but didnt sleep nights,
our fragrant privation didnt last,
its necessary wilting grew like an embryo
and the great anarchic wind blew the roof
of what you thought would shelter our love.
The world smiled, why not,
and we didnt even cry.
The gardens we crossed gave wild fruits
parakeets in the branches repeated all our promises
the gaping wounds smiled at us like owers
and already all we wanted was white rest on a bare mountain.
You looked back
I turned into a snowman.
The ower of anarchy still blows in the summer wind
leaning bodies reek of sprightly recollections
and dreams sneak at night with a whisper
to sweeten the trying awakening in the built city.
140
Theres no snow in our parts

and were still smiling.
Not a Poem
Not a poem
a stone
I ing in the face
of a young breathing soldier
not yet nineteen.
But instead of shouting,
You jerk, well screw your sister,
Ill whisper
to the porous stone,
to the stone in its ight,
Think, kid, think.
A Childish Farewell Song to a Prime Minister

Conceited and shortsighted people have restored,
the devil knows when, the term stature.
Theres no justice in language. A mans stature
is a pre-determined given outside his control,
a result of genetics and nutrition at a young age.
So what can he do, waddle on stilts? After all
he is not a clown. From now on, any tall columnist,
any grafti scribbler at night
will have their fun at his expense. And he,
on the heights of a chair above the people, sits
like a child-king, his feet in golden slippers,
small feet of pride that wont touch the ground.
And what will he strike their faces with? With what?
Hell stand up on the sturdy footrest, the short word, No,
and will stomp, stomp, stomp
on our faces.
M EIR WIESELT IER
141
The Wheel of the Century

If we compared this century to a Ferris wheel
visible with the naked eye even from other planets
(microscopic particles spinning off it into space)
it would seem from up there just a small spark
in a chain of lights
quivering in the darkness of the universe,
and one wouldnt see how it
pivots bit by bit on its axis.
But we, dont we, know it from up-close
from the front the back from under
and above and our inner selves. From the pure
cool clouds that roll past
to the galloping virus
in the hot blood, we,
from where we stand or lie,
may compare this century to a giant
torture wheel that from afar only seems
to vibrate on its axis, but in truth
its slow rotation accrues a slow
and terrible speed, and the number
of the tortured handcuffed to it
(no one bothers or manages to sort out
the keys, the millions of keys
that have long rusted or cast into the sea)
swells from decade to decade,
and only death prunes it incessantly,
for the dead are no longer tortured,
and still it keeps growing.
But numbers are such an abstraction,
they puncture the eye and remain translucent,
while the tortured man,
camouaged in a cloud of brilliant confetti,
or wrapped in bright-orange conceptual fabrics,
is one and only, intimate with his private tortures and nothing
more.
142
RUTH BLUMERT
(b. 1943)
Ruth Blumert was born in Israel and lives in Jerusalem. She

holds a BA in microbiology and biochemistry from Bar-Ilan
University and an MA in Hebrew literature from the Theological
Seminary in New York. She has published three volumes of
poetry, two childrens books, two novellas, and a translation of
Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Her awards include
the Prime Minister Award and the Jerusalem Literature Award.
The poems appearing here are from her collections Exiles on a
Strange Planet (1991) and Acquaintance from Another Age (1996).
Antiques
The bulldozer turned up a gleaming marble hand
it is easy to see that its cutoff extension is striking.
My tearing eyes shut tightly
and under my lids shards spun
into one and became me.
Sounds and past tunes are audible
in spite of incoherence and arbitrary cutting
as in an erased tape
something happened in me. Back then I didnt understand
the scratches no longer hurt much
up until the scream and the rip. Until silence prevails
143
The Combination
The combination to the safe
in my head
forgotten
I try it
like one who dials a number tens
maybe hundreds of times
and the number is not listed anywhere
perhaps listed but not in the book at hand
the dial tone always familiar
and the voice always a surprise
thats how I meet myself
The inner voice
like from the other end of an especially long cord
responds
and when its hostile and disconnects
the ngers freeze
and the safe
like a cemented corpse
sunk in the Hudson
In Time
In time, when the sign is given, you will nd
that you alone were chosen to see and understand
what it is
then you will ee from the ark to an olive branch
that will break under the weight of your burden and your pain
and with compassion you will carry it to the four corners of the earth
or
you will jump from the ship
demand that they hurl you overboard
to save sailors
No painting
will contain the terror
144
the uttering
in the cold belly of the sh
and the before
and the after
Sons of prophets, pimps of signs
will crash their plane on the isles of Utopia
and from submarines will shell
the cliffs of Ararat
Entropy
The wind that blew in our region
nally pushed us out to sea.
The howls frightened the jetties
ports and dams collapsed
the sea overowed somewhat
and a wind blew
no less frantic
and vaporized the seawater with our tears.
The salt sank in the desert
the water moistened the earth
and the sh and sponge enjoyed the calcied deposits
of our bones.
Weve given back unto nature
and only our spirit moved upon the face of the water27
swirling and whirling
like a virtual mushroom of horror
Chances
I could have cut the veins in my wrist
with a knife. A razor blade. If I were in the kitchen
in the bathroom anywhere.
But Im hanging standing
27. Alludes to Gen. 1, 2.
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145
standing unable to move

not even to hold something as simple
as a knife.
So Ill write another book of poems
someone will read it will say something
the weather will change
my children will grow and bear their own
Ill have grandchildren.
Fine.
Breaks
During the breaks between burning and burning in hell
I accumulate mileage
in space
theres no denying
it is dark and frigid
One day when my heart will be weary
of transitions
that stir cold re in scalding ice
Ill knock on the diaphanous gate
The Departure from the Garden of Eden

The departure from the Garden of Eden was swifter
than the departure from Egypt. For instance,
even matzos and bitter herbs they couldnt take
the g leaves just an additional excuse
for expulsion:
a protected plant.
There was no manna. There were no quails.
Sleep on the bare ground.
Cain an escaped convict
and Abel in a safe place
146
underground.
The sun has gone down already but
the snake keeps whispering
even though it doesnt stand a chance.
From a crumbling altar
we ate Cains sacrice.
The memories of pain
the pain of memories.
The Garden of Eden forgotten
as if faded on a map.
After many years, Eve is hollering.
Seth is born
to lay his hand over our eyes.
Jerusalem, Bus #18, 1986

Somewhat warm in the bus, an overcast day.
Sporadically, an insolent wind swirls through a window,
ees through another, laden with breaths of passengers
wrapped onto themselves, perhaps overly so. My eyes are
on the driver, an unpleasant memory, denitely. Its good
that Ive decided not to tell him that between two holes
in my new punch card an open number
disturbs my peace.
One travels on another bus, in a different direction,
not to ones house, to a different place,
and the sights within are edged with those from without,
the people foreign, as if from another city,
not one among them familiar from the habitual regular route,
and one must give in, without leaving the shell,
and let the eye accompany the new human.
We travel a while. On a bench in the market, a man clad in black
sits,
his face willfully turned to the wall of a nearby building;
perhaps a practice of many years.
And a harried woman with shabby bags, her head covered.
He noticed, he didnt, it no longer matters. He is
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looking at the wall. Somewhat tattered pants, a white beard,

his eyes already dim. Some are looking at a screen,
two-dimensional pictures cavort before them and they absorb
and adjust absentmindedly to the proffered atness.
A practice of many years. Through the windowpane of the bus
I observe. Real people, three-dimensional or more,
warm, clumsy, wrapped, gloomy on an overcast day,
and the driver, wide-backed, folded red earlobes, coiled like
ear-caps,
quite a repulsive face. Disagreeable to my taste. I recall.
Once, years ago, when he stopped at a bus stop out of town,
he admonished me with overt rage. I hurried down the steps and
fell
on my face and then everything went blank. I knew Im being
watched,
that my clothes are sullied in the mud, that Im hurt and someone
said,
Get up, Ill help you. I dont want to, I whispered. Dont want to?
Dont want to, I repeated to myself, licking dust, burrowing.
Its your fault, we saw it, says the voice to the driver, watching
from the height of his chair. Apologize. Dont bug me, heres the
number,
you can complain. The bus left, people walked away,
only the obstinate one remained until I stood up to limp.
Thats the driver. A mist of sadness like steam. A sensation.
Again a stop. A small group mounts. The driver upbraids a boy:
Your punch card, but the boy is jostled into the bus. Someone says,
Hes deaf,
hell soon come back to pay. The boy returns, red-faced, ushed,
slanted eyes, a bit shabby, hands the card to the driver
who mutters something with unexpected kindness.
On the seat across from me sits the ushed boy, his face on re,
and his red slanted eyes that say, Im sick,
clear up a little, pale a little. Is it the ush of he
who saw the voices, the scolding, the tone of voice saying,
with learned compassion, Hes deaf, and he rejects the fawning
caressing voice of the driver, and through his slanted, not Chinese,
slightly crossed eyes, he looks straight ahead with the stubbornness
148
of a statue that has obliterated its surroundings. Like Harry S. who

shot himself in the head in a rented room in Canada, weary of
rented rooms,
of part-time, occasional jobs, and of loneliness. We met
one Saturday in a synagogue in Brooklyn. My husband perhaps
suggested
I invite him to Kiddush. But Harry S. looked at me and said, She is
pretty,
and I didnt invite him. For this, for the way he looked, or for fear
of the obvious defeat that marked his face. I didnt know back
then.
The kid across is not yet defeated. A kid. His re-red face.
It is not the ush. A heavy school bag. Slanted eyes.
Skinny. Who takes care of him? The breeze steals in through the
window
a heavy drop lands on my forehead. Itll rain tonight,
says someone from behind. Great, let it rain,
replies the rm voice of a woman, its time.
Waves of Love
Waves of love are logged in geology.
They quake the earths crust
in small squeezes
that twist railways and warp plains.
Theyre just as harmful as other waves
that bear names more scientic
or exotic like
tsunami
but they jolt people and objects
in the same places walls and garments.
Like the membrane of the heart so the earths casing
is an inammable febrile membrane
susceptible to clots and dissolution.
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Silent Film
Talking to you is like walking on eggshells, you said,
and presently you seemed to be treading the froth of broken eggs
as if crushing grapes in a vat.
You meant to say Im impossible to talk to
that the broken eggs wont become omelet or wine.
I was thinking about hardboiled eggs,
about French omelets and other kinds of omelets
youre so fond of on Fridays and on airplanes.
There are still some rituals left.
I try to think about things
we could discuss in a sound manner:
the weather.
Want to take a walk, now, go out. Its chilly. Take a sweater.
Last time you caught a cold
you gave it to me.
A dialogue is a conscious crashing on a cement runway
the words are spit and are scattered.
The artists of silent lms you loved
know when to exit, enter,
how to act.
They disregard the captions which interrupt in between the
segments or
at their conclusion,
oblivious to the band playing in the hall,
to the whispers and whistles, to the spitting and chewing,
to the stomping of feet, to the shouts of bravo!
And their faces project an innocence,
even on a screen in a remote cinema hall.
Letter
Of course all that youve written / thought / wanted to say
was very signicant
150
great
if only someone had lent
a sensible ear.
In the meantime we all tread the same similes like a prisoner on an
outing
whom an eye observes through a glass lens
machine guns pointed at his feet his body his head
convincing him that as always
all is preordained
and freedom of choice a given.
So go and get tangled with philosophical / ethical / other meanings
and be bitter
and when you mend a sock
the sock wont cry out with each stab of the needle,
grateful for any kind of care.
Only the pricked nger concocts a dramatic story with a happy ending
where the aberrant villain is punished and fades
but the owner of the nger dies
and her daughter, in a glass coffer,
is surrounded with dwarfs
true, friendly,
and the prince who emerges from the heart of the forest
isnt he a hunter, an adventurer?
Yes, he removed one deadly apple
and went back to his castle with the grateful booty,
the fair prisoner,
their lives a sealed book
perhaps even to them.
Dont be upset if I dont write you,
it is an illusion that the universe responds.
Youve touched my heart like a poisonous but a stimulating apple.
For a moment youve touched my heart
the others
masters of theirs.
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Bitterness and the worlds redemption

are a destructive pair,
enough to open eyes and illuminate.
The worlds will see to their own.
Additional Dimensions
Now that theory has split from physical reality
and truth no longer sprouts from the earth
Im inclined to outrageous abstractions
yet not imaginary:
ten known dimensions (aside from others
so far only conjectured)
one in the other in a snailish spiral like
the universe, like you, like me,
and its beautiful.
This beauty is painful. The impalpable
intangible more than ever
when an elephant
stands on a turtle
that rode a snakes scales
and beneath them behemoths
and beneath them
an abyss.
Now that theory has split from reality
truth is reected everywhere.
Metamorphosis
The gentle demons that followed me
tormenting my breath with nettles
resemble today a secretary behind a desk
diggers in secret archives
people who knock on doors to extort
152
letters and favors

administrators who set up tables
at the gate of the Temple
to hawk blood they had exacted from my veins
dose after dose.
The intellectuals and all the scholars
wonder like me about my existence
stroke and pull my graying hair.
The demons that sought so the human essence
depreciated astonishingly
in a reality too meager to contain
the myriad of subtleties once possessed
by the gentle demons who kept watch over me.
Morning
Brown deposits in the coffee cup
everybody out of the house.
Through the window the grinding of trafc on the road.
In the shifting breezes
thoughts come in and leave.
Quite a nice day and I
quite exhausted.
And still, I parallel you, God.
In different proportions
we both mourn.
Lost in the Alleys of the Flat

Two in the morning
the embryonic day stealthily intensies
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153
silences the last cars on the road.

Contrite, they brake, switch off headlights,
people sneak into entryways,
a light goes out.
And again a star. A street lamp.
A steamy fog.
The nights too alert
the action too lit.
And I, sinner, peek
through the slits of the blinds,
wrapped in a curtain
a sheet
like a lost ghost in the alleys of the at
waiting for day to be born
to be hot like yesterday
noisy like the soles of shoes
and to drive away the chill
Ive gathered in my bones
as I count cars on the road
going past from here to there
rushing to different homes
at different addresses
at two in the morning.
*
Most of the time I doze.
They say: Its age, its winter,
and I rise, planning my next nap.
In the meantime, phone calls, work, people
saying: The children understand.
Most of the time I doze without dreams,
at least not those that one remembers.
I experience death in its elusiveness:
the beauty of snowy havens / grassy havens
154
is bewitching.
Black, too, is bewitching and soothing;
a vague dread of an incident
that will disrupt it.
Most of the time Im alert to possibilities
of crumbling and dozing
with no awareness
like a stone. No.
Like an atom released from its unnerving currents
with the aim to develop a new element. Creation.
My children will endure,
they have healthy genes.
The book Im writing
what will be done with it?
Elijah went up to the sky in a storm
but rst he wished to die.
And this after the Carmel, the miracles,
the widow in Zarefeth.
These are but eeting states of gathering strength.
I show signs of life,
I even awake from my sleep.
Everybodys pleased.
No matter
Im planning my next slumber.
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YONA WALLACH
(19441985)
Yona Wallach was born in Kfar Ono, a suburb of Tel Aviv. A high
school dropout, she studied art at the Avni Institute of Art and
published her rst poems in 1964. Later she became active in the
circle of Tel Aviv poets and published six volumes of poetry,
as well as plays and personal columns for magazines. She won
several awards, including the Prime Minister Award. A posthumous
Selected Poems 19631985 appeared in 1992. Her work has been
translated into nineteen languages, and in 1997 a selection of her
poems was published in the United States. Over the years, she
has become an icon of the feminist movement in Israel and has
been acknowledged and recognized for her bold and revolutionary
contribution to contemporary Hebrew poetry. The poems
appearing here are from her 1985 collection Appearance.
All the Trees

All the Trees
have ribbons in their hair
and all the trees
are somewhat broad
and all the trees
are quite feminine
and all the trees
are not tall
156
156
theyre rather short

and all the trees
are pallid
and all the trees
wear pale pink bows
buttery bows
in the hair of leaves
and all the trees
smile feebly
all the trees
nish feebly
what theyve begun not long ago
and all the trees
are not sturdy
and all the trees
are not naked
and all the trees
wear frills
somewhat pink
feeble as well
and all the trees
are not strong
and all the trees nish
not forcefully
not mightily
how come
not mightily
House Said the House

House said the house
tree said the tree
landscape said the landscape
man said the man
God said God
what said the what
meaning to said the meaning to
YON A WA L L ACH
157
seeing said the seeing

talking said the talking
I said the I
you said the you
love said the love
What did the house say to the tree
what did the tree say to the bird
what did the landscape say
to the man what did the man
say to God what did God
say to love what did love say
to the roads what did the roads
say to talking what did talking say
to the I what did the I say to the you
what did the you say
to the landscape what did the landscape say
Come to Me Like a Capitalist

Come to me like a capitalist
Ill be your laborer
Ill work so hard
youll have no mercy
you wont pay me
youll take everything from me
plunge me into debt
I wont see the end of
Im a serf
you a squire
youll pay me with goods
and take them from me
with plots of land
youll allow me to give back
what land
mental
an expansive wilderness
158
I wont make bloom

all will be yours
Ill have no spirit
left
no living space
personality
leave me some personality
some
so Id feel bad Id know
dont be egalitarian
not my buddy
not a communist
as it isnt written anywhere
as though it never was
Tuvia
The earth murmurs
Tuvia
the earth draws near
to observe you from up close
Tuvia
how do you look
Tuvia
the earth murmurs
Tuvia
the earth whispers
I have something to show you
Tuvia oh oh
Tuvia ohohoh
Lets count leaves together
lets count the stars
the clouds
lets count components
Tuvia
YON A WA L L ACH
159
the earth whispers

let me just come close
Tuvia
The earth draws near
ee
its not so bad
whats happened
ee
its not so bad
lets count components
uttering leaves
lets count leaves together
lets count how much there is in everything
lets count the grains
how many there are in every clod
Tuvia
to observe you from up close
Tuvia the earth is a grave
look at her through the eyes of a gravedigger
the earth is ash
look at her through the eyes of oxygen
Tuvia
the earth is home
Tuvia
the earth is nowhere
Lets count the people together
lets disturb their sleep
Tuvia
Tuvia
lets count the hairs
lets count the roads
lets count the places
lets count houses
the houses
160
Tuvia
lets shatter walls together
lets count the fragments
lets watch the people each on their own
outside the houses
Tuvia
lets count the crumbs
the emotional fragments
lets count the women apart
the men apart
whats left in the middle is held
held
held
held dazzled
the earth opens
a gaping mouth
such a big
mouth
round
lled with sand
to eat what
eat you
dead or alive
Sleep with Me Like a Journalist

Sleep with me like a journalist
notice whats not
dont notice what is
probe my life
pick at scabs
lay bare wounds
that wont heal
hurt me
youre the sadist
YON A WA L L ACH
161
I the masochist
bring up painful memories
ask how it was the rst time
remind me of my shortcomings
so I wont feel like doing it
wont get it up
make an impotent of me
and then
ask me small questions
as they do at welfare
at customs
the important issues
turn instantly to gossip
dont let my heart my intellect
cross over
leave me drained of knowledge
hurting
with no understanding
no love
utterly alone
outside
hear what I havent said
dont hear what I have said
leave me totally gossiped out
without a world
without friends
no inclusion
no objectivity
gouge my eyes in group sex
it will help matters
the big questions
leave to the press
theyll solve them for you
will solve for you the worlds riddle.
Men will solve the world for you
not you yourself yourself
a woman.
Lesbian love song number 1a
what else is there if not a love song.
162
Come to Me Like a Jew

Come to me like a Jew
no manual labor
no joy of productivity
be intellectual
allow
no inspiration
quote a lot
for you have no deeds
quote a painting
for you wont paint
quote a story
for you wont tell
yours you will forsake
for memorys sake
greater than your life
hate yourself well
ape me
be me
become me
any borrowed identity
but yourself
youll never be you
so I wont have something
to hold on to
hate your country
detest all poets
dont forget to hate each one
and me as well
if Im still around
hate
women with a devotion
you lack in life
always come before I do
so I wont come
ever.
And say women cant come,
or only one in a million.
YON A WA L L ACH
163
Lets Make a Little Philosophy

Lets make a little philosophy
investigate concepts
whats sensation
and what is order
and what is appetite
and how it jibes with manners
lets make a little order
what is order
where does it all begin
and where will it end
clear silvery dots
will twinkle will rise like bubbles
upward upward
these are the longings
so they arrive
derived from silver
but decisions are quickly made
and habits are changed marathonically
and all the philosophical questions
are always there
as cover-up
they dont change
All At Once Everything Seems Dear

All at once everything seems dear
everything was so cheap before
pitiful and fading
lacking luster
now all is suddenly dear
sparkling and alive
how alive are the colors
all by me all from me
164
all is my situation.
To you all seems mundane
everybody seems interesting
who are they their lives
what are their lives
all seems trite
uninteresting
but this is your situation
the routine outlook
the matter of routine
the little interest
see all is interesting
you decide
conclude
how things seem
and each objective conclusion
is a eld of pretense
I wont venture into
of course all is overblown
hyperbole
the extent of interest
is power
and so is beauty
and all thats positive
all the rest are mishaps
we explain away
and mend
and mend
and mend
and mend
and mend
Woman Becomes Tree

Woman becomes tree
here her two hands arms
YON A WA L L ACH
165
raised to the sky

two branches split
from her body
from her trunk
reposed on invisible knees
she is beheld down to her knees
her thighs
the roots of the soil
the alluring curve of her abdomen
the hollow of her trunk
her abundant hair
long boughs
branches
here woman turns to
an ancient trunk
she is so pretty
and perfect
Ive never seen her before
but I knew
she is the woman
turned into a trunk
no green leaves
no mark of growth
all had dried long ago
the beautiful face turned wooden
all is uniform
did it happen at once
with no gradations
what cant be transformed
in the esh
happens instantly in vision
and what can occurs rst
handiwork comes later
theres no point
it is after all only perception
that creates such an image
I know well whom were talking about
166
When You Come Lie with Me

Come Like My Father
When you come lie with me
come like my father
come in the dark
speak with his voice
which I wont recognize
Ill crawl on all fours
and talk about all that I dont have
and youll scold me:
Materialistic.
Lets part
at the gate
say goodbye
a thousand times
with all the longings
that exist
until God will say:
Enough.
And I will let go
wont lie down
not with God
and not with my father
Ill want to lie with you
but you wont permit
together with my father
youll suddenly appear
as one in charge of
inhibitions
my father will be an angel
a military commander
and the two of you will attempt
to make something of me
Ill feel
like a zero
YON A WA L L ACH
167
will do anything
youll tell me to do.
On one side you will be God
and Ill wait till later
you will not have the power
and I just a slob
trying to be polite
will cut you in two
and myself too
part spirit
part body
youll appear as two
and I too
like two seals
one injured
dragging a n
or two women
one always limping
and you one face
and another barely visible.
168
RAQUEL CHALFI
(D.O.B. omitted as per Chals request)
Raquel Chal was born in and lives in Tel Aviv. She studied
at Hebrew University, Berkeley University, and the American
Film Institute. She worked for Israeli radio and television as a
writer, director, and producer, and she has taught lm at Tel Aviv
University. She has published nine volumes of poetry, and her
work has been translated into English, French, German, Portuguese,
Spanish, and other languages. She is the recipient of numerous
awards for her poetry as well as for her work in theater, radio,
and lm. Her collected poems, Solar Plexus, Poems 19751999,
appeared in 2002; in 2006, she received the Bialik Award for
poetry. The poems appearing here are from her collections
Free Fall (1979), Matter (1990), and Love of the Dragon (1995).
Travelling to Jerusalem on a Moon Night

The window travels the clouds travel I
travel the road travels the moon travels the trees travel the pane
travels the moon travels the passengers travel
the earth travels the mountains travel the planet travels the thoughts
travel
the time travels
the light travels the glass travels the galaxy travels the moon travels
and God
eternally
stands
169
Hair of Night
1.
To weave the locks of darkness
a thick braid on the downy nape
of the earth
to mold with moist hands
the clay of dark craving
trees knitted from trembling
coiled branches of allegiance
and a broad meadow
waiting in vain
2.
Night combs its long hair like a woman
sitting at her window at night
3.
Night hungry runs barefoot through the streets
weeds spread rumors about it
4.
Night begets day what will day bring
night its dreams undone
breaks into the heart of a city
rips a street into bands
how I wish to dye the nights hair
a startling orange
5.
How we wished a blaze will spread in the twigs twigs as blaze
sweep the trail of excess words
leave a clear polished dance oor for thick dense emotions
spin into dance, into a giant ball
6.
How I wished the great nights hair
would wrap around me like snakes but warm
170
7.
Such a truth and even the down of dusk
stiffens
the minds shutters get knocked violently
a blow of darkness
rescues a night
whose hairs got all tangled up
8.
Dreams the hearts sweat
on a nights taut skin
its hair gathered
its temples damp
the secretions of dreams dribble from it
drip
drop
cool
salty
9.
Such an old night
its chimes still clear
we crawl on its belly
and it welcomes us inside
like a mad satyr whos fallen asleep
blissfully
The Water Queen of Jerusalem

The Water Queen of Jerusalem
dives into history
history is hard and she grows ns
she has no air and she schemes
gills rowing through memory
the Water Queen of Jerusalem owns
a bathing suit made of Yiddish
R AQU EL CH A L FI
171
the Water Queen of Jerusalem wallows on a stone beach in

Ladino
fearing the rise of water level in Arabic
the Water Queen of Jerusalem has no
sea in Jerusalem
she has a history
Jewish
and she holds
holds holds her head
above water
Reckless Love
blues
I was a little reckless
he was a little reckless
in a cheap caf on the eve of Purim
everyone around us with the face to the tv
up on the wall.
He broadcast to me on a high frequency. I wanted
to broadcast low-low but it came out
high. I was a little reckless he was a little
reckless. My hair was unruly his hair was unruly
my past was undone his past was marred
he had a nervous tick in his hand and I chain smoked
his dark face twisted in a childs smile
in my face raced electric currents
we were reckless and we knew we wouldnt
come out clean.
Outside people with plastic hammers banged each other
over the head and we drank hot chocolate.
His eyes transmitted a black madness and I bit
into it as into a cake. The waitress came out of a Fellini movie
and asked if we wanted Hamantaschen.
He talked about epilepsy. I about paranoia.
It was the eve of Purim. Two clowns showed us some tricks.
172
We were like children when a large ship

blares and leaves them behind.
Later, in the park, Your skin is like velvet.
Later, in the park, Go home, or your wife will cuss you out.
Later later later I was pure and beautiful.
It was Purim in the street. The air was scented
with early spring.
I put lipstick on my nose and matches in my ears.
A red-nosed clown wept his childhood with him.
He was damaged
I was damaged
he traveled in me in sea and land
but he was reckless and I was reckless
he spoke of seizure I of conclusion.
He called for help I called for help.
He spoke of silence and I agreed with all.
What a thing it was
a great madness.
We were like children when a large ship blares
and leaves them
far behind
in the sand
I Drew My End Near

I drew my end near
and it came near
a couple of cats sat in the tree like calm fruit
I called it to me and it lingered on the street corner
one cat leaped and sat on my shoulder
I stroked the animal but my hand hurried to stroke the blood
that strolled in my end.
My end is soft, I know, and patient,
I wanted so to rub against it
be warm at its side
like an old woman next to her old man
R AQU EL CH A L FI
173
Sitting in the Wall

The wall has a mouse the mouse has ears
the wall has ears
Gavriela has a heart the heart has a crack
soon we will patch it up for her
The mouse in the wall sits and weeps recalling its youth
you toss it some cheese but it nibbles
bitter nostalgia
Now the three of us sit like she-mouse and mouse
and one despondent she-mouse
sitting in the wall
and the wall doesnt know
whats going on
in our three hearts
Monologue of the Witch Impregnated by the Devil

I can hold in my belly all
the heavenly angels all the small
demons in hell. I have enough warmth
to wrap the world in a down cover.
In it drill for me dens of love.
Let them not tell me Ill give birth to a monster.
All the bells of the depth ring madly
in the depths of my womb. When a man sleeps with me
God sleeps with me.
My love knows me until he loses himself to the bottom
of a last fall. For him I am
a vortex that doesnt stop
ripples ripples in the universe
Ill spray chills over ancient continents
Ill stiffen with pleasure the seas soft down
Ill breed lizards with so much love
174
Ill sweep the earth with searing ames

if not with pink babies.
Ill unrufe the eiderdown of my love feathers
feathers into the sky.
Ill refute gravity.
Split open my belly as you did
the wolf s. Put stones in my belly!
But rst let me
devour everything
with so much hunger
so much hunger
And the Whiteness Grew Stark

He went.
And I went
and a growing white distance went
and opened
and the whiteness went stark
went and stretched
I could have called after him
he could have called after me
but his name went and grounded itself
at the tip of my tongue.
He went. Or maybe I did.
And a space
a large quiet space
went and spread out between us
growing more and more comfortable
like a tired wanderer in a white bed.
I went and he went
and air
pallid air
and guileless
went and spread between us
with the speed of light light
growing and spreading.
He could have called me. Yes he could have
R AQU EL CH A L FI
175
but the word that was the thread to which I was joined
fell from his ngers
and the thread went and wandered
becoming entangled.
I went
he went.
The air between us multiplied like the plague.
He went. I went more and more
it was hard to feel the ngertips the tip
of the tongue the tip of the thread was impossible
to nd in the knot
that went and grew terrible went and grew dark
like a mountain where a myriad of shadowy satyrs lie faint
after an orgy.
He went. Now there isnt even
a dot on the horizon.
And only the empty air
goes and grows heavy goes and
shuts.
Elegy for a Friend Who Lost Her Mind

You were a eld of breaking poppies
under the weight of the tar of madness
I watched you go mad under its weight
a glossy insect
under an exacting creature in the dark
I watched the warm creature pervade your body
I watched you get crushed inside and out
the muscles of your face trying to escape
the truth you know
about yourself
youre suddenly mad suddenly
and theres no escape
I watched your body freeze
not in the hot tar of madness
frozen
in the basalt of the sane
cold fear
176
and in your heart the blazing heart of lava

in the black heart of frozen basalt
A girl that wishes to be good even in the face
of the terrible dybbuk clinging to her esh
my friend
my body is crushed in your anguish
my heart consumed in your Jobian hurt
and the sights the sights haunt me mad
A Concealed Passenger
Find myself in Caf Marsand
humming like these old ladies
seated round tiny tables
licking cream-puffs with care
with trembling hands smearing blazing red
on collapsed lips
Find myself sipping whipped coffee with an eager mouth
dispatching the last of my senses
to grip the pleasure
before I drown
before I drown
Find myself in the large mirror opposite
concealing in my haughty body
a very old anxious lady
her heart beating beating
bent in fear
a concealed passenger
Blues in a Jar
Now its better
now the troubles in a jar
with a twist-on cap.
R AQU EL CH A L FI
177
Now its better

the shadows dont leap
the abyss buttoned up
the mouth shut
the st tight
the air tart
but all is held with a cement clip
all is utterly safe
you can see the horrors twitch
inside the round glass
beneath the screwed-on cap
such comfort.
You may sprawl on your back
inside the large jar
and observe with interest
the small jar
and neither the one nor the other
will open.
Now its better.
Now everything is in a jar
with a twist-on cap.
German Boot
Jerusalem, the holy city, is cold in winter, / including holidays and
the Sabbath. /
And one Friday, in early afternoon / the clouds werent / red, not
even
golden, and the rain didnt / drip like a discreet tear / but roughly
probed
my body all over / on Ben Yehudah Street, in the holy city of Jerusalem. / My blond
hair turned black in the rain / and the rain came down on me like
a blow under the belt /
and my feet hurt from the cold / like from a terrible heartache.
Now the question is asked / How does it happen / that a nice
Jewish girl from a good home
178
parades in winter / in the cradle of religion practically barefoot, /

especially
since take off thy shoes is not the point here, not to mention / I was
always weak
in Bible studies. / My dark hair clings to my forehead with a wet
kiss / and the rain plays
havoc with my body, / and the answer is simple and very antilyrical: /
my shoe-size is forty-one.
I was in Paris last summer and couldnt nd / boots my size. /
I found a French lover / discreet and experienced, but not boots my
size. / I was in London and drank beer but no boots / for my
large
feet / and also in Italy, which is a professional boot, / no boots for
me. /
Its been seven years that Ive been looking for boots, / and even in
heaven I thought
for sure I wont nd any. / And so, today, in Jerusalem, as the rain /
raids my body,
and my large summer shoes / are like small Solomon pools / in
which
I walk / and drown / as the hail wrecks my body, /
on Ben Yehudah Street, / in the window, I see boots, / like shoes
with a long neck, / brown, soft- and kind-eyed like Leah.
Seven years Ive been laboring for Rachel barefoot with no shoes /
hoping for Leah whose gaze
is soft and brown on my feet / already mad from pain / from
servitude / to their size that knows
no bounds. / Seven years already that I go crazy / for a cover for
the esh
of my naked feet / such turpitude in a rough Jerusalem winter /
seven years already and no boots / in all of Jerusalem and the
heavens too /
and here / in the window / sits a pair of boots / like two lovebirds.
Oh, my soul departs and I enter / the store behind the boots. /
Oh, oh, yes, the man brings out / of a frightful box a pair
R AQU EL CH A L FI
179
of brown boots, or / maroon, whats the difference, as long as they

hug my feet /
without stiing, / as long as they dont hang at the tip / of my
toes like a proverb, /
oh, hee, they mount / mount my feet, and their brown skin /
climbing, climbing /
up my legs, softly snuggling my ankles / kissing my knees / and
stopping there.
Ay, ay, ay, what boots! / Such leggings were never seen in all of
Jerusalem! /
I face the mirror / and they watch me from there, /
pretty like a pair of brown-eyed gazelles, my long legs held in them /
and they rise even further up. / What great / legs, what a delightful
warmth, how /
brown and warm and lovely are these boots. /
Ninety pounds, says the master of the boots, and I say / No,
seventy,
Im just a student not even twenty. . . . /
Not possible impossible at all, absolutely not / for it is imported /
and impossible absolutely out of the question / for this is
extraordinary boot, /
made in / Germany / ---Like a blow in the feet / and I ask:Are you sure? Maybe made
in Sweden? /
No, absolutely not, he says, impossible / to mistake, it says here,
Salamander. Germany and this / is the most best possible. / But
what about
Made-in-Israel?! / I pull off and wildly toss the brown boots / and
what
about Made-in-Israel?! / How come they dont have my size, / I,
who was made in Israel! /
It is only the Germans who like comfort, he replies / in a clear
German accent, /
thats why they do so big boots / for ladies. /
So you have nothing else?! I shout. / Nothing.
I stood there two hours, afraid to go out into the water / that no
doubt will rape me now,
180
a savage army, / and will soil my feet. /

I stood there two hours / looking / intermittently at skies and
boots
And what about Volkswagen? he says to me. One / all right
the other no?
You cant live like that, life is / life. / I stand in the shoestore, my feet naked / and cold, desperately craving the touch of /
salamander. /
And now my naked feet in the mirror / seem to me / size fty! /
Whereas
before, when they were wrapped / in this overowing beauty, they
seemed / size thirty. /
With Volkswagen its different, but these are boots / I say to him,
my heart revolting at me. /
At any rate, about two hours went by, /
Quick lady, I close the store, tomorrow is the Sabbath, / so if not
now
no boots! /Maybe Ill think it over tonight and if I decide that
boots. . . .
At any rate, I stood there thinking / about this brown skin. And
what is
salamander, if not a creature of re and a creature of water too, /
and what about lampshades,
and the ne skin / of all sorts of uncles who werent my uncles. /
I am, indeed, an amphibian
creature / with a practical and exible conscience, with no /
hangups, Im always
in touch, / my name is Rita, Im totally / uncomplicated even if
sometimes
I read books. / Whats important is comfort / but / salamander is a
water creature, industrious
and intelligent (see / Chapeks book on the subject), that erects /
walls under
water, erects cities / and large dark machinery underwater, /
its dark there, and who knows what type / of skin it is, this skin
may be /
R AQU EL CH A L FI
181
suede of eyes, Leahs eyes, Saras, Rivkahs, /

the eyes of Rachel in face of the knife /
And these brown boots of a marvelous cut diaper my feet like a
lovers
hand / sculpt my ankles so that my feet / seem almost Japanese
in this German boot, / and tomorrow is the Sabbath, and this is a
God-fearing Jew, and if not today /
then when / boots, / and if not salamander then who is for me, oy
to me and woe
to me, to the eyes that see this, / my beautiful feet that look like this /
and the rain outside, in the Jerusalem street, a rowdy rapist / brutal,
/ and salamander
is a creature of re / burning in the re but not consumed / but
the eyes of Leah,
the eyes of Sarah, the eyes of Rivkah / the eyes of Rachel, the eyes
of all my uncles and aunts there /
were consumed were consumed / and here is salamander burning in
ames but remaining /
intact here before me / here at my feet /
a warm blooming ame
And on a Friday afternoon / on Ben Yehudah Street in the water, /
my feet in boots, and my heart in my feet, / and the men of
Jerusalem, Jews
and Gentiles, whistle to me / for the legs. What a sexy pair of legs,
says /
one Mustafa, and right after also Dani from Ramataiim, / and my
legs rejoice
and the warm brown skin / so shaming / clings to me as if it were
my own skin /
as if I grew legs in velvety suede / sad as the eyes
of Leah my ancient mother / and I walk and walk through the
streets of Jerusalem
across Katamon and Rehavia and Abu Tor and Meah Shearim
and my feet are warm, perhaps too warm / this suede, and a wet
sensation
in my feet / perhaps after all these bastard boots do allow in a little /
182
rain, or perhaps my feet sweat as in the mikveh28 / and whats this

pressure, some blood
perhaps in the big toe / drips through the toenail, something
squeezed / unknown and clammy
sticks in my feet, / some dirt perhaps, or perhaps /
the skin rubs my skin, / or perhaps its just the blood / roaring
in an orgy of warmth / joy in the blood vessels, warm at last /
after seven cold years / but no, its the heel so suddenly clenched, /
as if caught in a thicket, held in the st / of Esau, Israels calamity,
what does it matter
if / it was Jacob, its the heel that hurts / so badly, something is the
matter
with my boots, / but Im already walking in Mamila Street, and my
feet /
so sexy, a whistle here / a squeeze there, and the blood erupting /
from its vessels / from so much lust / brownish warmish sweetish
and my feet take me to / my current lover / and he whispers: What
legs! and he peels off / my esh the sweater and / the pants
but not yet the boots, / and I march to the bed and the soles
thump, / and the boots / the boots the boots fondle my feet / and
Im already
spread-winged / and my loveron top, in heavenwants, wants
very much /
to shed the boots / off my feet / but / the boots / arent shed /
the boots wont be shed and wont budge / and my lover lacks
manners
and I lack speech / and he tries and tries / and they persist, the
leeches /
and I mutter and kick / I curse and pound my feet /
yet the boots are welded to my esh / and then / he pulls out a
knife / tries to peel them off /
but the boots adhere / then he pulls out a saw from under the pillow / and tries to saw them off /
but they adhere adhere / so he pulls out an axe from under the
bed / and tries to cleave
them / but the boots cling / wont let go off my feet / so he
swears
28. Ritual bath.
R AQU EL CH A L FI
183
and pounds / and I curse and kick / but the boots cling /
what a dybbuk of boots! /
And my love / in a demonic dybbuk / begins to rip them / a
dybbuk ghting a dybbuk /
but suddenly pain / all at once / and he tears my skin / off me/
and my love / tears the boots off me / and the skin/
and the boots are kicked to the oor/
and Im a love-blazing ower
and the spot
I lie on
holy
and my spirit fades in smoke
and the entire world swoons
and the secular angels in heaven
call out Holy Holy
and my feet
red
with shame
184
MORDECHAI GELDMAN
(b. 1946)
Mordechai Geldman was born in Munich and came to Israel in

1949. He holds an MA in clinical psychology and lives in Tel Aviv
where he has his own practice. The author of eleven volumes
of poetry and three essay collections, Geldman is a regular
contributor to the press as an essayist and art critic. The recipient
of the Chomsky Award, the Brenner Award, the Amichai Award,
and the Prime Minister Award, his work has been translated and
published in Arabic, Czech, English, French, Greek, German,
Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
The poems appearing here are from his collections Eye (1993)
and The Book of Asking (1997).
Friendly Dragon
All that I saw were but itting shadows
most of the time background events kept coming
forms were postponed for other moments
more and more forms were postponed
until they vanished in the sequence of backdrops.
All that I didnt see this morningsurfaced on its own:
the dreams, the I pining for its prospects,
the remnants of yesterday, lust deceiving its fences,
fragments of other worlds,
the sheets out of which I emerged,
185
the yellow arc of piss,

the water I buy from City Hall to wash my face,
the toothpaste that neutralizes the sense of taste,
the re, re boiling water for the Brazilian fruit-powder,
the re, the old, perpetual re which will consume the entire world,
the garments, the garments of pretense, the face of deception,
the face designed to its owner,
no one will see my face,
the driver, the I who leads my face,
the I who participates in civilization,
the two bonsai trees you must place in the sun,
the tiny statue of the meditating man,
the cashier at the cafeteria punching the price of coffee,
I didnt see the light of morning,
I was in light but didnt see it,
only now I see the pen, I wrote, write, will write,
and Im surprised I saw the pale postal clerk
who sold me stamps and envelopes,
and I felt for her, her excessive efforts to please,
her doubts about her looks
(am I being too coy,
too incredulous?
Am I mirrored now
in all that is visible?)
But what I truly didnt see this morning
doesnt surface on its own,
is not even included in blindness,
but is tossed somewhere like the newscast of TV photographers
that grow old the instant theyre broadcast,
the masses starving in Somalia,
the defeated boxer, the plane-crash survivors, the farmers on strike,
the oods, the earthquakes, the res,
the man who murdered his wife and daughter with an ax,
by re, by the sword, by famine, by plague,
the man traversing Niagara Falls across a rope.
It seems therefore that Im seeking to see
it seems therefore that poetry opens like an eyeball
186
burns in a blue re
seductive like a friendly dragon.
Porno 2
Even though the labia, usually,
are not judged in terms of the beautiful or ugly
just as you dont evaluate the earth in those terms
her labia were beautiful and pure,
and in the gigantic dimensions of the screen
her lips became a glorious gate
a gate into the path of desire.
But the director of lust decreed
that even after she has stripped
even after the enhancing of the gate
(on the mound, red grass)
she will reject the actors touch
will say, Not yet in a whispering voice,
pulling out of her cunt, one after the other,
tiny, cute panties,
panties designed with hearts, berries, and pheasants,
as if asserting that even after having stripped
even after displaying her cunt
in her hiding place she is still clad
a bride forever, a virgin forever,
and those who do things in her cannot rob her
all her grooms will remain bachelors forever,
as if asserting that even after having stripped
she is still dressed to be undressed
and in her depths theres no mother nor mercy
but she gives birth again and again, as if compelled,
to the robe of disrobing
to the moment of surrender to a gaze.
M OR DECHA I GEL DM A N
187
Porno 3
There was a scar across his thigh
but his other parts were intact to the extent
that even a gesture of his hand
was retained in memory for a long time.
They didnt lm the soles of his feet
but the ever-concealed member
was magnied gigantically
during the intoxication of his blazing motion.
He got the scar, one may assume, in a knife-ght,
or in a car accident, driving recklessly,
but his beauty accorded him a certain calm
and when he touched the women there was in his touch
remoteness and power, lust and boredom.
No doubta dangerous character
yet his great danger lies in his enslaving beauty
a beauty deeper than the exactitude of his parts
a beauty worn like a magic garment.
The Hottentot Venus29 (Porno 7)

In what chains they had brought her to Paris
to show off the wonder of her great buttocks
well never know,
but a crowd of men, eager and curious,
paid for the spectacle of her buttocks
for ve whole years
if theres any wholeness left in the observing and the observed;
well never know
29. The Hottentot Venus was the name given to the Hottentot Sarah Baartman
who lived in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Two scientic papers,
full of prejudice, were written about her preserved vagina, by Blainville (1816) and
Cuvier (1817).
188
what the Negress thought about the men and women of Paris,
its virgins, its wives, its ivory whores,
their buttocks, compared to hers, deprived
in weight and adoration;
well never know
if she learned French, enough to say:
Sir, a black ass is worth gold,
Monsieur, un cul noir vaut de lor;
well never know what she thought
of the mansions of the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens,
the bridges of the Seine, or the cathedrals where at great heights
slender naked men were displayed on a cross
or women clad in white and gold
women who gave birth without lust or intercourse
their womb full of mercy, a temple, an oyster,
their eyes fated to see God
their eyes fated to lament the suffering of their son;
but she must have had gold earrings
or earrings of some golden substance
for it is impossible that in Paris they would have let
her be without jewels and adornments
and she certainly had tears and a talent for weeping
that at times materialized between one show and its next;
and well never know how she died
was it the city air and cigar smoke that nally got her
or perhaps the cuisine renowned for its delicacy
turned in her blood into a deadly dose of cholesterol;
all that is left of her
is but a crumbling piece
or, if you will, gone to pieces
what has remained of the Hottentot Venus
is much less than the Venus of Milo
exhibited broken in the mansion of the Louvre.
From the Hottentot Venus a coroner had left us
only her glorious enormous buttocks
and her black vagina whose lips
are thicker than the lips of her mouth
an illustration of a vagina that is a dark vessel
an illustration of lust that knows no bounds
189
a matri-typical cunt of all the whores in town

a black sin lurking in the most pearly of women.
Those who still seek her buttocks,
particularly the view of her vagina,
may nd them in a large preservation jar
kept at the Museum of Man near Trocadero
in the very same town that worshipped them;
it is easy to charge that coroner
with necrophilia racism and misogyny
but harder to credit him
with excessive lust for that Hottentot female
to induce him to conquer the oxygen of time
and to grant what he saw as the best of her
the status of an embalmed Pharaoh or a Nefertiti
a gift from the morgue for coming generations
for the French and all other nations.
Holy Ground
For whom was intended the new sign
holy ground
posted at the Muslim graveyard
that nal parking lot
overlooking the sea among the towering hotels?
Is the sign designed to deter lovers
not yet frightened by death and its dead
who make love on tombs
saturate stones with salacious juices
moan and chirp at the edge of the abyss
camouaged by bushes and growth?
Or perhaps its a sign for the Jews
the deeds of living Muslims
having increased their hatred
to offer a Muslim skull or a skeleton hand
as a plaything for a child
190
who may yet grow up to be a pathologist or a doctor?

Or perhaps the sign was meant precisely for the dead
who must never again desire earthly desires
must not return each night from hell or heaven
through tunnels dug from their graves
to share in the joy of lovemaking
with those who do it on tombstones?
The meeting ground of love and death
is a particularly holy one
since a poet like me
for whom another love-affair has ended yesterday
is a kind of a compulsive Orpheus
always pursuing a missing bride
the hell of her rejection
his death within hers
and nally returns
at his side nothing but poems
sparkling fresh like dewy leaves.
Dolinger
When the neighbors opened their front door
whom did they open the door for
for whom did they wait in their rooms
and why did they leave it open like this?
When the neighbors opened their door
Dolinger sneaked inside and made their home his
without them ever taking notice;
in other words, he lived in their rooms,
seeing but not seen.
At times he stood at the dining table,
silent and sheer, and watched them eat.
At times he sat and watched with them
idiotic games and soaps on TV.
191
At times he listened, inquisitive,

like a visitor from another planet,
to their barking, biting quarrels;
at times he sat without them on the terrace
and looked at the sky and the branches
of the great mulberry tree,
and nights he slept in the living room
or on the windowsill.
You must be wondering who is this Dolinger
and why he chose to live with my neighbors
and why a door that opened by pure chance
decided his fate for many days?
Well, this Dolinger grew to hate
the life of the single poet,
fancying instead the odor of sweet stench
of my neighbors apartment,
its essence an articial orchid spray;
to the bachelors poem Dolinger preferred
coitus kindled by scant desire
electronic gadgets collecting in the kitchen
defrosted Chinese dinners
eaten quickly in front of a ickering rectangle
as Amsterdam burned at its edges
as Somalians starved to death
as diseased Indians lay dying among cows and rats
as Croatian women were raped by the thousands
as nipples swelled like ripened gs
across beds of soft porn
as a woman in a bathing suit and high heels
stepped between boxers to display the number 8
as the picture of a kidnapped girl was shown
as investigators soaked the investigated in baths of excrement
as the everyday kept bending to the rule of the remote-control
as the actual dissolved into a dream from which no one awakes.
It is possible he just grew tired of being alone
yet possibly Dolinger is a poet
192
of a poetics different from mine

his main topic the life of my neighbors
the life of obsolete automatons
subjects of words others thought
hermetic monads always eeing into kinship
beyond the eld, beyond the re,
far from the voice of Aeschylus.
Tonight I Yield
Tonight I yield to a gaze
I who postponed attachment to a woman for an unlimited time
am compelled, surprised, as soon as you enter the caf,
to imagine our joining together:
at rst deeds of procreation
which quickly bear a child
like that dark one
oating in the populated space
menacing with karate moves
the crowd of cake-eaters;
later, the Sabbath table,
covered with white cloth,
its entire sweep serving one purpose:
support a vase of roses?
Noa pair of candles burning like our souls.
And then a house and a sycamore are drawn,
and from the valley the scent of re,
a strange mist blankets everything,
perhaps smoke.
I Wont Travel This Summer

I wont travel this summer
I feel no longing for the tourists life
I prefer the feel of a books
page, a leisurely walk in my neighborhood, ruminations
193
A languid summer showed me

that my proximity is full of distances
areas I havent reached yet
elements resembling rivers and a mountain range
waiting in the morning mist for the lonely drifter
In Milan Square not in Milan
I observe through the car window
a tree shading green grass
a shadow tree on radiant grass
and I am startled, dream-like,
as if I had arrived in my neighborhood for the rst time.
In a dream divining my travels
I realize I must hurry and pay it a visit
to observe its vigor
to grow and become its totality
even proffer gifts of dew in ower bowls
to shade with feral light
my feverish steaming city of hollow blue
anxiously anticipating Muslim suicides
I dont know if Ill have the time
so many journeys are a must
to every near distance
to everything the eye wanders past
seeing not seeing;
perhaps tomorrow Ill notice my room
and sail across its unveiled spans
into the closets storing testimonies about my past
into the drawers that had developed a life of their own
to the pile of exiled papers;
I might write a travel-log
about the movement of my eye in the kitchen
about the agile lizards
which are but minuscule dinosaurs
and about a variety of black and red ants
that turn my crumbs into loaves;
and Ill write a paper about the lamb and the slaughter
about the seven cereals stilled in the jars
about health angels made of soy
194
about the piggish lusting mouth

about the denial the vomit and the continence
about the food forever lacking
about the food that starves you
about food for the soul and food for the body
about the lost breast and the missing god
and also about the humming doves on the window-ledge
copulating and copulating with no care no shame
Abused Neighbor
A neighbor, her face creased with lines,
who lives below me in a crowded at,
fell in love with me, I think,
because of two accidental hints
hinted, in her view, in the jeans
that dropped twice
from my clothesline onto hers
stretched below and parallel to mine.
For she perceived desire
in their yielding to gravity
a perception that rose in her eyes
in our eeting encounters on the stairs.
Clearly, if her husband on every occasion
hadnt listed her aws hadnt
crammed them in the neighbors ears
on hushed Sabbath mornings,
and if her face hadnt been creased
by the prison of her life and its warden
to the point where she was completely
cut off from the passion of suitors,
she wouldnt have perceived in the jeans
hints of love and pleasure with the neighbor
upstairs, namely me.
It is also clear that had my life been replete with love
the neighbor wouldnt have entered the poem.
195
Yes
The sparrow that collected a piece of cellophane
seemingly prefers a plastic nest
and so progress is borne on a birds wings;
and I collect to my brain a nesting bird
into my brain plagued with yearning for a nest
into my lamenting brain30
I collect from the street a bird specialist.
Buying furniture, organizing the closets,
plastering the kitchen,
sorting out the photographs in the album
all these last activities,
says the sparrow,
are nothing but nesting steps.
Lacking a real mate of either sex
I deserve to be heckled for succumbing to delusions
yet it is possible that the soul
knows its mate is approaching
his stride heard in the mountains, towns,
the clear spring skies;
in the earthly and heavenly media
an undeciphered message has already been received
even if the intellect still laments.
Why a Frog
The frog originated in a movie31
the movie about the nun and the frog:
within the cold stones
a young nun falls sick
but the law of the convent
forbids a cure
30. In the Hebrew, nest and lament have the same derivation, and yes and nest are
homonyms.
31. A movie by Alan Cavalier, Therese, telling the story of a young Carmelite nun
who fell ill and died in a convent, leaving behind a diary, The Story of a Soul.
196
and a moment before her death

crowned with a wreath of thorns
bleeding, not from her period,
a sister-nun proffers
a sort of a farewell gift
a small frog beating like a heart
and the frog is not a future prince
not a prospective prince
not a prince awaiting a kiss
a frog is a frog a he/she
Almost Flowers
I almost brought owers you said
and I thanked you
with humility and joy
for almost owers
would be owers blossoming in our fancy
in the lusting owerbed of my soul and yours
owers from a eld not a shop
budding tiny and quivering in the springs breeze
white blossoms with dewy leaves
awaking in our hearts a new virginity
an innocent touch, stunned and drugged
in the miracle of our hunger
also blossoms of angels trumpets
will soar in the skies of our love
and peach blossoms translucently pink
will drop through the night upon our bed
and with them almond blossoms
vertiginous, joyful, reclusive,
and paper-blossoms where we signed
our names again and again
will adorn our common grave
visible already through the mist of our future
in a plot strewn with violets.
197
RUTH RAMOT
(b. 1946)
Ruth Ramot was born in Ramat Gan. She graduated in 1975

from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has
published four volumes of poetry and is the recipient of the
Tchernichovsky Award, given by the Writers Guild. She works as
an editor and lives in Tel Aviv. The poems appearing here are from
her collections Slices of Heaven (1994) and Sealed Waves (1998).
Blue Prince
for Vladimir
Blue prince, mine, in a robe
of thin ice.
Prince of night, mine, tender in skin
lustrous with lusts.
No leader, no commander of armies, you,
prince of robes and skin
whom the King must clothe
and the Queen pleasure.32
32. Alludes to (and reverses the male-female roles) Exodus xxi. 10, If he take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her conjugal rights, shall not be diminished.
198
198
*
I leave, taking with me
the plastic utensils,
the roast drenched in gravy,
the laundry bills.
The bedclothes that saw
everythingremain.
Rest in peace.
I wont be coming back.
They Assault Me the Flowers

As I lock the car door
the red owers
dotting the side of the road
assault me
demanding that I accept
this exact order
imposed on them. To grow
precisely here. In red.
Along this mosaic path.
They regard me with a owery silence
demand that I relish
their sweet scent.
A man hurries ahead, opens
the front door.
Now I have to say,
Thanks,
to acknowledge his useless
courtly manners.
RUT H R A M OT
199
*
Quiet and an evening breeze
come in through the window not
bringing peace to the pile
of newspapers on the oor
at the foot of the bed.
Dreams
have drowned me tonight
delivering their meaning
their tongues licking my mouth.
Used up dreams.
I come and go in them as I please.
Spent dreams.
Quiet and a light
evening breeze
now coming from the sea
mufe the shadow of the lamp
along the wall
endeavor to mollify
dreams.
And in contrast
the sunset.
Its predictable colors again
ravishing.
In the Soft Curve

In the soft curve
drawn from the mothers body
to the stroller
stray souls drift
200
getting set
to become one with the bow.
From the overturned trash can at the street corner
leaps a yellowish cat
scrawny.
It runs runs
as if someones waiting.
The Scent of Wind

for Gili, Daniel and Itamar
A bus cuts through the illumined darkness.
Outside the coffee-house
the scent of a non-autumnal wind.
Gradually, Im lled with compassion
for the womb that bore me.
No longings.
My heart goes out to my children
who long for my womb.
Day, night.
Painting
Time paints
with honey brushes
a sun invades
the girls bed;
shes curled like a fetus
in a warm wet stain.
RUT H R A M OT
201
A hazy shadow of a pear tree

the shelter of her climbing feet
lingers on the terrace
of the small, red-roofed house.
On the clothesline the wash.
Arms and legs
swing yes yes
to the gentle breeze
soon the honey will dry.
At long last, the picture
will hang on the wall.
*
The moon doesnt t here.
Tonight its yellow hues overow;
antennae drill black holes.
Doesnt t the wet asphalt
reecting the cars headlights
reluctantly giving off light.
Doesnt t my shoes that suddenly feel tight
the stain Ive noticed on my sleeve
as my hands grip the wheel.
This moon doesnt t
the town I was born in,
yet I cant remove it
nor my gaze hanging onto it.
Toward Evening
Toward evening
my wishes go naked
202
in paper canoes
sluggishly they drift
in lakes of murky moments
a wind moves upon the water
its white kisses
delivered one by one
and a great calm
descends upon the water
Hot in the Corner Caf

Hot in the corner caf in Trastevera.
The pale blue shirt I ironedhow I ironed
adheres to me
consumed with beads of sweat.
Even the breeze that stirs
the fringes of the striped tablecloths
doesnt stroke.
Someone so utterly left me.
All resolves drown
in the greenish Tiber River
owing heavily not far from here
with leftover bottles and paper wraps.
Dead for moments
in the bosom of rotting falling leaves
in the shade of giant parasols laden with dust.
Just to rise from the plastic chair
leaning on its side
I have not the strength.
RUT H R A M OT
203
Someone so utterly left

me
here.
Arithmetic
Im no good at arithmetic
I compute and calculate
and somethings always missing.
At times I try to add
yet theres no place to take from
since everything
grows empty, leaving
nothing to add from. At times
theres nothing to subtract.
Like I said:
Im no good at arithmetic.
Time-Saturated
Time-saturated I am and the sorrow
of years lingers in my body
observing me now
with dogged resignation.
I count sorrows
with a very private pleasure
suddenly remember
the slabs of marmalade
on the cracked marble
in Mr. Kozlovskys grocery store.
How I aimed for height
to better see its colorful magical streaks
how I held in my palm
my one hundred grams.
Youll never know its taste on my ngertips.
204
Love Song
People who smoke calm me.
The time they take to bring out a cigarette
light it
inhale
this span of time
lulls my fears.
The faint aroma reminds me
that forbidden acts are still possible.
And I seat myself
in my fathers lap
watch his hand holding a cigarette
my gaze kissing his nger
stained yellow from nicotine
my hair trembling from the smokes caress.
My father was a smoking man
a man who listened to the radio.
Heres the news, and rst the headlines.
When he is near me
the smoke of his Matussian
comes straight from his mouth to mine.
Room Number Forty

The key to room number forty.
Forty, please, I try in English.
Forte, explains the chubby reception clerk,
means strong in Italian.
He says and smiles,
heaves his muscles.
From then on, whenever he sees me,
he says, forte,
raising his arms as if lifting weights.
Forte, forte, I
weep,
RUT H R A M OT
205
go up to my room with a bag of gs

splitting open in my hand
to sweeten my banished
hours in Rome.
Later, in mobbed cafs,
I go round and round
repeatedly banish myself
from all the piazzas
drowsing among the alleyways
immured in sun and shade.
Relentless, my new leather shoes
gently tear tiny strips of skin
off my feet.
I walk, tightly holding
my new leather purse.
And frankly
what
do
I
need
it
for?
Nuns
Such homely nuns I saw
in Campo di Fiori.
If I looked like them
perhaps I, too, would have become a nun.
During haunted nights
Id come to Jesuss body,
not the one on the cross.
The one who lived
before the crucixion.
206
For Id said:
If I may but touch his garment
I shall be whole.
*
Yesterday when I sat in the caf
and you werent there
the windows lled with heavy raindrops
and I saw the sea
pull us to its bosom
and I couldnt remember
who was next to me
and it didnt matter
nor did the sea.
Later the storm receded
waiters rushed to open doors
so that passersby wont fear
come into a caf
menaced by the sea.
RUT H R A M OT
207
AGI MISHOL
(b. 1947)
Agi Mishol was born in Hungary and came to Israel in 1950.

She earned her BA and MA in Hebrew literature from Hebrew
University, and her rst volume of poetry appeared in 1972.
She is author-in-residence at Tel Aviv University and poet-inresidence at Hebrew University, as well as the artistic director of
the International Mishkenot Shaananim Poetry Festival. Mishol
has published eleven poetry collections, and her Collected Poems
appeared in 2003. A frequent participant in international poetry
festivals, her work has been published in Dutch, English, French,
German, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Spanish; collections of her
poems were published in the United States and Ireland. Her
awards include the Prime Minister Award, the Dulitzki Award, the
Harry Hirshorn Award, and the Amichai Poetry Award. Mishol
lives in Kfar Mordechai, where she grows peaches. The poems
appearing here are from her collections Fax Pigeon (1991), The
Interior Plain (1995), Look There (1999), and New and Collected
Poems (2003).
So Overbearing Had Become

So overbearing had become the bodys crust
within the house that hardened
she beckoned agony to a waltz;
behind the curio glass
on top of lacy blackbirds
crystals shook with desire
208
208
for a knock
and agony became a lever
for unbelievable pleasures
candlesticks grew tense,
the memorial candles, the tapestry dragons,
and in the dimness
the frontal lobes wonder intensied;
horny tipsy she-imps
zzled in the cupboard
ushed with wine.
Agony waltzed at three quarters
and the bitch, already pink with Vivaldi,
begged release from the light
wished to shed her fur
wished to ride a broom to innite bliss.
And to the sound of dwarfed words
whispered in her ear
she sprawled herself upon
sloping skies
couched in a soft
downy existence
unlike any other.
*
I remember a short speech
I worked out in my head
about how I hush my life
to hear the poem that would come
if I advanced half-way to meet it.
But instead I breathe life
into some expired lover
with the point of my pen
knock him to the oor
of the page,
count to nine.
AGI M ISHOL
209
It Seems Miraculous to Her

Even now as she is locked
up in her head with all the antiheroic demons who limp across
the breadth of her emotions
who goose-esh her skin reciting lonely
lonely
she is not prepared to shed
her biography
and denitely not the pain
shes been brooding
like a golden egg.
And it is not as if she lacks
a brooder who would substitute
for an hour in which she could become
just esh that harbors breath
and nothing else.
Yet she is loath to miss the plot
things like the telephone a thought
or the hum of existence
whirring onward in her body.
Turning to Rest in Sapphos Poems

Were sprawled across the cool stone
under glittering stars
bite into an apple
honoring all the loved ones
who came to rest
between our thighs.
We talk about love
in great detail
talk about life that turns us insatiable,
210
about the tree that is

a green fountain.
Her beautiful head is next to mine
her curls in mine.
She says
I say
and our giggles escape
into the vine
whose scent
twines from us.
Afternoon Nap
My bulging cat
splays herself across my bare belly.
Embryos stir between
her belly and mine.
Perhaps theyre mine
perhaps hers.
The hour is weary.
The Interior Plain

Here,
in the interior plain,
I herd in the meadow with my Walkman
I pick up a stick
split a pomegranate
whistle to the dog
AGI M ISHOL
211
To the list of things that give me goose bumps

Ive added this morning Billie Holiday singing
Im so lonely.
Revelation
In the very early morning
on my clothesline
I saw a pink angel held by a pin
and below it
a black kitten
trying to catch
its sleeve
Like a Bird Tagged

Like a bird tagged on the foot
she walks around
a wedding band on her nger
as if someone might investigate
the course of her migrations
might come back to check
whether she has nested
has reproduced
In Her Bed
In her bed,
after youve shined and opined,
have already displayed that famed peacockiness,
it will be my voice from a corner in the ceiling
that will intimate for you Marcus Aureliuss dictum:
212
When meats and delicacies are placed before you,

youll do well to envision
that the sh is the carcass of a sh,
and the meat
that of the fowl or sow;
and so the Florentine wine
is but the sap of grapes,
and copulation
but the friction of an organ
followed by
a spasmodic, viscid secretion.
The Sacred Cow of Hardship

In the hour between wolf and dog the sacred cow of hardship
promenades in my yard as if this were India. A mottled cow
fat cow, cow, hey cow, what are you looking for here
where the Oy blooms, cant you see how weary I am
unable to tell if its sleep I seek or death.
The weed of eking a living wraps around me, draws a slash
of silence across me; I have nothing except
the brown stupor of your eyes. I, too,
am not at my best, am wrapped around the void
like a pretzel round its hole; my laughter exhales vanity
my face the vanity of vanities, my body the folly of follies;
on the one hand, oh, the fear of death, and on the other,
your bewilderment. One thing is clear, oh Lord, my shepherd,
I am done for here,
and I have yet to decide
whether to slaughter or write about you
as you squat at the asterisk between the stanzas
take life impersonally like a morning erection.
Already lines leap at me to tell about the gorgeous pink
packed in the contour of your teats
as I build upon you verbal towers
AGI M ISHOL
213
even if theres no hardship in the word hardship

and in the end Ill be pierced by the two-edged sword
my poem directs upon itself.
The Irritating Manner in Which I Exist in Your Fancy

I who was present down to the airy triangles between my ngers
have now slipped into the slumber of oblivion
with nothing to offer to those around me
who are but a blot
on my optic nerve.
And you, if you make your way
through the hoot hoot of pigeons toward me
(unlike the love magician toward his gifted volunteer
in the audience)
youll see that my house schemes against me
a Sleeping Beauty-ness to last a thousand years,
that creepers cling to my windows with a soft green brutality
that my hands sink like soot into the fur of my dogs
that my esh has grown thick
that the hair on my legs tangles undisturbed
and that Im not the Agi at the end of the path33
a pining puppet
a peg of love
From the Depth I Called Hey 34

From the depth I called hey
you moron, see how
torpid I am from so much Riesling
33. In the Hebrew, the poets last name, Mishol, means path.
34. Alludes to the prayer book: From the depth I called thee, God. Interchanging
a letter, the poet turns Gods name into a slangy form of address.
214
how every moment

a moment sets here
without us
under the mango moon
as a blue yogi lizard
creates for herself
out of sheer volition
a new tail
as long as the night
When Soft Angel Plumage

When soft angel plumage sprouted in my esh
(Im half angel with breasts
half with a penis
semi erect)
I wasnt amazed
didnt wave
and to where the spirit
moved I went
to die from here a little
Yet there was no outlet for the spirit
but through the body;
half the night I roamed
its squares
until I waned with the city
with the hum of the ocean
and with two rectangles of dawn
that formed in the window.
Morning and She Pees

Morning and she pees
yet she is far removed
AGI M ISHOL
215
still dozing on a mound in her head

from where she listens
to the popcorn words
that lazily pop
on the plane of her consciousness
For instance: water
or water in the kneecap
as a woman said yesterday in the clinic
the one who sat under the sign urine
Not the one whos going to die
but the one who as yet is going
nowhere and in the meantime only says: Water
in the knee is a stone on the heart.
She is done peeing yet remains seated, musing:
If a stone on the heart is a boulder on the back
and if a boulder on the back is a log between the eyes
or salt in the wound (shes wiping)
or the brow of steel or the stiffened neck35
or the whole spirit encoded in the body
it can get pretty crowded
She wont wash her face in the brutal freezing water
it is better to wake, veil one, veil two, morning fog, etc.,
rather than bolt up, gaze wide-eyed
as one foot romps the euphony of stars
and the other runs errands.
Estate
No peacocks will strut in my yard
its enough that this morning I rose from the sink
to the triptych of my face
35. A group of Hebrew idioms Mishol distorts in the poem.
216
too pink to my liking, what with the honey-blond,

and curly to boot, God,
how tacky Ive become
so, no peacocks.
Ill purchase a pig
purchase a pig so I can speak
entirely new phrases, such as,
go check on the pig, or,
the price of pigs
has risen.
But no peacocks.
I am that pig from the previous stanza
splayed on my side in a puddle of hurt
so shove your my tomboy my mufn
my soft cheese tomato for
words aside and you aside
Im the cute hedgehog turned porcupine
the livid porcupine
multiplying in every pupil of our pupils;
Im the metallic green y rubbing
its forelegs before your face
spinning malice
even if behind my back
clovers have begun to chatter spring
reporting on my impressionistic life
and on the clear pink I show the world
when I yawn.
Woman with Pitchfork

Just as I sit with complementary nipples,
one red one green, my gorgeous cat walks by,
the Russian Blue I intend to spay,
and you bring over in a hat your most successful eggs
and all that you have said throughout the years
AGI M ISHOL
217
to this woman and that, and now want

to check what kind of creature I am
Chimera
Youd hoped for peace and alfalfa, right?
For a metrically hooting dove, right?
Laura36 I am not. Youve seen for yourself
how when I walk without a bra my tits sort of dawdle
one pace behind the body
how my ngers, when not alert,
go each their separate way; and besides,
Im a woman with a pitchfork
who unstitches all your similes
back to life.
Nocturnal I
a.
In the house
all is contained:
the sugar in the jar
the bread in the bread-box
the knife in the drawer
the food in the pot
the evil spirits
in the folds of the drapes
one upon the other
the pillow-cases
the blankets
the underwear
the bras
all is contained:
the music in the grooves of records
the rats in the attic of rejected items.
36. Petrarchs Laura, known for her beauty.
218
b.
If the woman should rise from her bed
and open the fridge
it will be possible to see her face
to see her gaze
in the cheese looking back from its holes,
but in this wan light
it is clear her hunger
ogles another light
not the ickering blue
of the television
not the red projected
from the digital alarm
nor the neon of moon
that sparks the lamp of her soul.
She requires another light
in the night waiting like a black armchair
to devour her.
c.
Not for nothing do I stand like this at night
leaning over the sink
manning my position
singing: Far away
a dinghy goes
For everything that can
leaves the earth:
the chimney smoke
a prayer
leaps of joy
Yet the people in the house breathe like sheep
asleep in their rooms, God their shepherd
And beneath the house ground water
and beneath the water
a lava of torpor.
AGI M ISHOL
219
Nocturnal II
Again the husband bones the wife
and she chirps a little before
falling asleep.
Above them stretches the tile roof,
darkness, stars.
At this hour the lonely
under their blankets
lonely even more
and a bird shrieking across the night
is their soundtrack.
At this hour the husband thinks of his fruit.
Not far from here, silent among the leaves,
fruit swell for him,
ripen, full of juice;
so much comfort (he reects) in their generosity,
every year they surrender their yield,
how soothing the precise return of events:
the oxalis, the yellow-weed, and that gripping one
whose name (dead nettle?) he always forgets.
The cool fruit swell
and ripen for no one.
Even the beautiful name Persimmon
given them by man
is unknown to them.
At this hour the woman
reaches down
and with one nger covers
the simple line
between her legs
with one nger calms
the tunnel of life.
In the eld oats a thought
without a thinker
220
about how Nature has no imagination.

All in its season. The innite
sorrow of the circle.
The insult of one option.
No persimmon will ever grow a cucumber.
Shaheeda 37
The evening grows dim
and youre only twenty.
Natan Alterman, A Souk Evening
Youre only twenty
and your rst pregnancy is a bomb.
Bearing explosives and metal shards
under the wide skirt,
you advance through the souk,
you, Andaleeb Takatka, ticking among passersby.
Someone has screwed with the bolts in your head
and dispatched you into town,
and you, who came from Bethlehem,38 chose
a bakery no less. There, you pulled
from yourself the safety latch
and together with the Sabbath challahs
the poppy seeds and the sesame seeds
blew yourself up to the skies.
You ew with Rivka Fink,
and Yelena Konreiv from Caucasia,
Nissim Cohen from Afghanistan,
Suhila Hushi from Iran,
and two Chinese men as well
you swept along with you
to your death.
37. In Arabic, female martyr.
38. In Hebrew, Beit Lechem literally means House of Bread.
AGI M ISHOL
221
Since then other incidents

have overshadowed yours
yet I keep talking and talking
articulating nothing
222
DAN ARMON
(b. 1948)
Dan Armon was born in Jerusalem and lives in Tel Aviv. He

studied literature and theater at Hebrew University. A poet and
playwright, Armon serves on the editorial board of Helicon. He
has published six volumes of poetry and is a recipient of the
Prime Minister Award and the Pinsker Award. The poems
appearing here are from his collections Duration (1986) and
Footprints (1989).
The Squash Watchman

Sitting in the eld watching
the squash. Theyre interesting,
squash. Each on its own
lying on its belly and the sun
tickles the fat end
a bit smeared in mud
but the skin is
smooth. And each
a little skinny
around the middle.
With me they all
snuggle in the sun
as if listening
to the drone of ies
and this hum
223
The Apple the Cucumber and the Plum

The fruit is done. Now it has
touched the bounds of its form
ripens toward whats beyond
and with a sweet longing turns
to rot from inside.
The sea is not far, from here
you can sense the depths of blue,
the song of blue, and the fruit
knows: each tree and its fruit
the tree is the one to decide
and every normal fruit loves
its tree. Even if the poets
fruit is not to be foreseen.
Suddenly on an apple tree cucumbers
grow, but love is foreseen.
Theres a cucumber in
the apples avor. Both
face the sea and the wind,
or with wine,
and the woman observing.
To woman to breasts to taste
the apple hums and sings:
Im a young cucumber
who hasnt yet known
the taste of a womans bite.
The sea engenders its own appeal
the poet approaches his end
next to the woman facing the sea
and a plateful
of plum pits
Midas of Sugar
1.
Sits on the balcony reading a crime book
shaven neat very clean
224
on his head a black pressed yarmulke.

At the right time he rises and walks
to the TV room, watches the news,
yet another crime for dessert.
Somewhere God is there, too,
not ignored, no, on the contrary,
gradually He joins the brave cops,
the arms of the army and the law,
and at times is even implied
in the curl of Reagans smile,
or suddenly appears in the sweet taste
of candy reached for absentmindedly
when the all too human camera
lingers on crushed bodies
2.
Everything you touched
turned to sugar Midas
again you smile approaching
raise your hand smear
stewed sugar across my face
shove God pastries
into my mouth
Stairwell
The people we wanted, wanted badly,
were not there, in vain
we ran up the stairs
One facing the other at the door, lost
like refugees from a storm facing a blocked shore,
we realized how much we needed their refuge
DA N A R M ON
225
What now, you whispered for both of us,

your strength, in fact, didnt hold
in the sure solitude, and you left for the roof
From the bottom of the stairs a sigh
from a dusty dark coat
a hand reaches for the banister
Between an old climbing step and the next
silence fell like departure and later
a hesitant sigh, and another step
like a coerced return to life
a resigned sigh and again silence, withdrawing
from the thicket of the neighborhood din
Dimly, as Im abandoned
to this march of climbing old age,
love is renewed, I havent known
about this power as if forming on its own
until my eyes, alone, met yours
and in the quiet, in the desolation between two steps
we heard a sound through the window
a bird gathering its wings
and landing on a branch
*
In a temporary shelter
barely following the music on the radio.
Through her gaze I receive a beat
a passage from tone to tone
from heart.
226
Ive dropped the strategy,

imagined plans for a new order,
and no longer aim as some master
to break time across my knees.
The body within still harbors
the old remote drive
for life, still swims
in love, even if against its will,
in the blue days,
and later,
Im cast in my corner,
practically hurled to the wall,
and music on the radio
the only comfort left
musing in silence.
Play in the Kitchen

He forgot to play
saw the instrument
lying about
indifferent chords
taut
He didnt see
the many notes
that were hanging there
in the past, full of life
When he plucked a string
a sound muttered
as if disturbed
from its grave
DA N A R M ON
227
Is it my death
he asked himself
but his self wouldnt respond
He went into the kitchen
seeking succor
in the aroma of tea
Another kind of green
in the kitchens window
the neighboring roof
Shingles and still pigeons
pepper trees ecked red
lots of sun
From now on
he reects
I must play in the kitchen
*
In a gesture of argument
during sleep
or a question or looking for something
a hand was discharged from under the sheet
reaching back behind the head
and a nipple was released
from the edge of the sheet
To escape the heat
legs were pulled apart
and the sheet folded
sweeping over the mound of wheat
and a large peasant foot
bolted at the side of the bed
228
Across the desert of the oor

exposed in the rising light
convoys of ants on their way
from the crack in the wall
to the adjoining kitchen
And while the carpet
ared its colors
the woman turned and discovered
the half length of her body
the half of her back sloping in shadow
the half of her behind borne in a blot of sun
the slant of her leg stretched out
her foot pointing downward
at the side of the bed
Eight Short Ones

*
A chameleon crossing the road
doesnt manage to achieve
the color of tar.
*
Her face there
in the hazy mirror
she couldnt observe.
*
Tonight a moth
struck the eye
of the newscaster, end.
*
Blossom of the almond-tree;
one lazy bee
fed up with ying.
DA N A R M ON
229
*
Ant, a grain,
a combination that connotes toil
and gluttonous ingestions.
*
From the blackbird
in the growing darkness
the beak remains.
*
Yom Kippur
on the roof of the synagogue
pigeons quarrel.
*
Swallows scatter
and shriek:
Eureka!
Baking
As the heat reaches the innards
a motion begins
and the bread awakes
to ll its mold.
Morning. I emerge
baked with sleep
todays mold:
bright blue at noon
red, graying at the edges,
waiting.
Before Im done
they arrive to eat me.
230
I havent as yet put in

raisins.
Barely some salt.
*
A dark backyard,
Tel Aviv, near the garbage cans,
spring behind the house.
A back window cast light on your shoulder,
and a gesture of your hand as if saying:
From the point of view of the ant, see
how tall the grass, the yard
a wide plane, what are
these strange cliffs the houses,
what are these people, strides, as long
as they dont step on you, and the noise of cars
stirs waves of pleasure in the heart.
Your eyes sparkled in the grass, that light
fell on your thigh
Come, kiss me.
Fire
A charred eld
at the foot of the olive tree
a rock still blazing
and warm ashes
in the wind
A stunned bee
drops
at the mouth of the beehive
DA N A R M ON
231
scorched, in her wings

useless honey
At the bottom of the tree-top
black leaves black
too is the trunk its core
still transporting life
to silvery green
and light blue
With one pull
the rope is torn
where charred
and so you
and I
Candle
A candle in the room
a quiet presence of re
a woman on the couch her eyes shut;
quiet presence like a domesticated pet
a placid bird or a cat on a chair
attentive to its stomach like some Buddha
like a lion now diminished seduced
by caressing human hands;
re clings to fuse.
Love like a living thing held by two
like a candle might ignite a world
like a lion must be appeased with candor.
*
The wondrous wilting of a ower
in the calm of a vase.
232
Red still burns in petals

eaten at the edges.
One already fell to the water
its body still light.
Floating with the vigor of stored matter.
I recall an old lady in Greece
at the door of her house in her white village
gazing for hours at the sea
or was it indeed the sea?
I also recall the joy
in my hand thrust across the water,
rowing,
blessing the source of my life.
Song of the Valley

Barks rise from the valley
a valley of vast darkness
crowned with strings of light;
each tiny light in the distance
is a house and a man
a dog barking at the door;
each star is a passion
cut off from the promise of fulllment
and grown cold;
each lamp light in the distance
is a passion kindled
and a man coming out to the door:
here is his barking dog,
a darkness rustling foliage
and where, or to where, his passion.
DA N A R M ON
233
At the end of the leash

stands a man
hushing the dog.
My heart tonight a baby in its crib
smiling to a thief in moonlight
I am the thief caught in the spell
who for a babys smile
gave up caution and was captured.
*
Weve stabilized the emotion:
with much effort we molded a jug,
a perfect form,
a resplendent emotion laid
up front on the shelves of a glazed
personality, after it burned
it was welded an awareness was scrubbed
off debris and adorned
with enchanting owers
It stands ready as if waiting
for some lunatic or thug
to kick it to pieces
the simple way in which
hearts break.
Travel
Matter, where do we go
where does it travel.
Humming and whirring
the old refrigerator
shudders and goes silent.
234
The armchair is patient

cradling in its bosom
upholstered owers
and the live owers
are still good
for a song of appeasement
In the lake of the window
the neurotic cruising
of butteries
In the caf
the din of discussions
into the wee hours
And later a word here
a word there saying goodbye
or arriving too late
Chairs folding for closing-time
and shouts on the beach
a wave shatters at a waiting pier
And the boat is just
travel in motion
DA N A R M ON
235
YITZHAK LAOR
(b. 1948)
Yitzhak Laor was born in Palestine. He studied at Tel Aviv

University and holds a PhD in literature. He is a poet, playwright,
novelist, essayist, and editor of the quarterly Mitaam. In 1972, he
was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
In 1985, his play Ephraim Returns to the Army was banned by
the censorship for defaming the IDF, a ban that was annulled
by the Supreme Court. Laor has published ten volumes of
poetry, three novels (two of which were translated into German
and one into English), two collections of short stories, and two
books of essays. His poems have appeared in Arabic, Dutch,
English, French, German, Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and
Spanish. His awards include the Kugel Award, the Prime Minister
Award (twice), the Bernstein Award, the Amichai Award, and the
Israel Award for Literature. Laor lives in Tel Aviv and writes for
HaAretz. The poems appearing here are from his collections
Night in a Foreign Hotel (1992) and And Loveth Many Days (1996).
A Note
Ill leave you in writing this version in Hebrew, our common
ground
for love, strife, separate bank accounts
and perpetual defense against the spite of the State
and its Hebrew lies (Ill be exact with the truth, the punctuation):
I went out, Ill write, I left the hotel.
I took the road, lets say, I went north.
236
236
I took lets say, a truck,

a Volvo, lets say, gray, lets say, I traveled.
Did I or didnt I drive?
I disappeared, forgive me,
(Ill add for a measure of sympathy)
in this darkness, like in a sickening daze,
if to start, better start at the beginning,
nothing is to be taken for granted,
at the beginning there was chaos
and all the rest must be toppled
(without longing without remorse)
scrutinized, jolted, gouged, made ghastly, razed,
I may come back, I may not come back,
I may give up, I may return to stay.
Silhouette
Like a buoy your breath was left
upon the dark water, your body
anchored next to mine. Cruising or oating,
I hold on to the sounds, a radio, or a whisper
from outside or the adjacent room, perhaps they quarrel
or joke about the morning trip, perhaps
a man talking to himself, and if I wake you
(translate for me) how fast will you recall
how I hurt you? In me, for instance,
theres no anger left. I wander
in the dark where I recognize nothing
but your breath, your body a dark silhouette
which remained after we turned off the light
Sleeping in Another Place

A heavy light oods drowns the room, soft
as glue, and the wind beyond the shutters
casts dancing shadows across the wall. You cant
YIT Z HA K L AOR
237
set music to this dance, not even

internal beats, nor can you distinguish
in this yellow light any familiar object,
not the teddy-bear that stuck to you like a defect
since your childhood. Tonight I could have been darkness,
not seeing, not seen, not drifting. Outside nothing
can be seen, and if I lay my head on a cool strip
of darkness, if I rest a moment on the bank of this
great river whose other side one cannot see,
dont have to see, dont want to see, I could be darkness,
sheer, mightier than the ash, the candles ame,
the bed hanging at the bottom of the light
like a plunging paratrooper. The world
is a quiet, very deep cave, why be
afraid? Im not staying over.
Poetry
The dead died in summer and the poem
was written in winter, and spring
and autumn have gone by more than once
but I write it again and again:
The dead died in summer
the poem written in winter.
I write poetry so as not
to crumble
And what do I do when I do not write
and how come I dont crumble?
Perhaps because poetry
is a sort of walking and stopping
(At times I wait for the bus at the bus stop
and if it doesnt arrive, Im lled
with apprehension and walk to the next stop
and again I wait, and again I walk,
stop, miss the bus, late, slow, and hurrying.)
I write because Im crumbling
238
Im a poet at points
where I dont write and dont walk
dont even sit. Where in this vast
space is the point where I (think me,
not crumbling, writing, a poet)
Gouging
A man goes out to the dark
from a dim and hollow doorway
he walks, stumbles, exhaling
mist. The houses, too,
exhale fog,
like the cats eyes.
He goes back home, doesnt write
poems, doesnt read poems,
essays, how not
to write poems,
not to read,
he wants to be seen
without seeing to be
a gaze.
Somewhere, they found a corpse,
gave it a name, the eyes of beasts
ll the world
with darkness, like a tub,
memory is plugged.
It is not death that watches us
with a thousand eyes, but
blindness
Sweat
Without a shirt she waited,
stooped, her black hair
YIT Z HA K L AOR
239
(as if shampooed) probably

expected to be stroked.
I touched her back, skin
to skin. Perhaps when she trembled
I noticed the sweat.
Perhaps she perspired when I turned off the light.
Perhaps she discharged sweat when she came.
Then she moved but once. I stopped.
She got dressed, shy, dry
(as if after bathing).
She doesnt want to, ne,
I was lled with disgust. I think.
I need a verb here.
Something has changed. I cant be precise
if I dont write the word disgust
The Narrators Death

I.
Preparations for your death began
while still in hospital. They promised,
in their hearts, in the smoking and weeping area
outside, near the elevator, never
to forget you never, and right
after you died in their hearts they addressed you
in the second person, and promised
out loud in the third person never to forget you
they said we wont forget you
our Iris sweet Iris
beautiful Iris Iris Iris
we wont forget you (because we
love you very much, for they had lavished on you
words of love when you were alive, and wiped
your tears and soothed you
and comforted and comforted you because you had cried,
I dont want to die, why must I die
240
Im still so young) and on the night before the funeral

Batya, who loves you ercely (and you loved
her ercely, too) had dreamt how they dress you up
as a bride and you wait in the room
to be taken to the huppa, so Batya dreamt
right after you died, on the day
you turned twenty-ve and you were no longer,
you already the cold corpse
There are such moments:
A great pain and faith
in the eternal before images
vanish and words emerge
from the open wound the soul
and iname longing and offer
comfort and we promise truly
not to forget the dead which means
a word which means faith
in a word which means prayer
which means the love of words.
Beyond it
one sees nothing
truly
The world given us
again and again in words
is taken in silence. Not so.
(The world is torn
and in the middle like a limb
limp and torn
your mute body
is tossed)
II.
Later
we talk
as if words
are ngers
YIT Z HA K L AOR
241
and at their tip

we can touch you
as if just fog
lifted for a moment
from the cold ground
as if we hadnt stepped
only this moment on the cold
ground to distinguish between
human and all that isnt
human between the living
and the impure between the speaking
and the mute between
what was and what will be
and what will not be
We wont forget, we wont forget
you, our beloved, your beauty,
unhappy one, will serve as a monument.
Not one of us will ever be
as beautiful as you, and on the way
to our conjugal bed as we mourn our youths
well remember you in words
at the time of our happiness.
(And I, too, sit tonight
in a distant land, its Friday evening,
and I tell myself how once
we spent Friday evening
we were in your room
you were wearing pink
and you were even more
beautiful than your memory
as it suddenly appears in mine
in a cold and distant winter.)
A word is the balm a word
is the wound a word
is the salt
242
III.
We wont forget you, everyone
will remember something: a color, another
color, a childhood scene, another
scene, a rally, a quarrel,
a lover, a moan, a whole limb,
a wounded limb, a body of a
girl/boy, a womans body
under/above a mans body,
alone, in all its beauty
Let man remember
his passing days
as if on the high road
as if at the center of the universe
and the course of your life
joins, breaks,
disappears
And who but you remembers
a beginning an end
in one sound
a single dash
between shade and light
And now you no longer have
you have no narrator
YIT Z HA K L AOR
243
MAYA BEJERANO
(b. 1949)
Maya Bejerano was born in Israel. She holds a BA in literature

and philosophy from Bar-Ilan University and an MA in library
sciences from Hebrew University. Bejerano has published ten
volumes of poetry, and her collected poems, Frequencies, appeared
in 2005. She also has published a childrens book, a book of essays,
and two collections of short stories. Her poems have been set
to music, and her work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese,
English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian, SerboCroatian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Her awards include the Prime
Minister Award, the Bernstein Award, and the Bialik Award.
Bejerano lives in Tel Aviv, where she works as a consultant at
the Tel Aviv Municipal Library and conducts poetry workshops.
The poems appearing here are from her collections Selected Poems
19721986, Voice (1987), and Beauty Is Rage (2001).
Poetry
Now that her face is clean and pricked like a sieve
with necessary truthspoetry may rise,
bend a moment over her make-up table and face the mirror,
any old mirror found in a store, a shop in some bazaar
or other, and leap
cackling inside.
So as not to mess up masks that will have to be erased
and then wiped clean with water and soap
244
244
it is advisable that each gesture line and color

will be drawn with care
the mirror a vast arena a watchful bull
will look into the face of Mrs. Poetry
as she leans into her own reection
will sneeze will dip horns
lets wait and see how far shell go
the bull in the mirror and Poetry facing it;
the bull may exit the glass and ravage her as she bends
a ravaged poetrythats what well have
if tamed poetry wont face up
to the bull in the glass
Data Processing #10

In a desolate hour I smell something burning behind my back.
My lost kingdom; guarded solitude and weeping ahead.
With what right? You do what
you do, wheres the ending to your heart and, for instance,
in what fashion does the rain strike her mane?
Her mane strikes an abandoned rain.
At this moment, all concentration is so precious.
To take down a few facts: to drop like a diamond;
and that the waists of houses have turned red. Sparks on the road
grew more intense in my eyes in the night I swear.
A dybbuk came in between angelsour singing feet.
Dazed with wine, Ill stagger like a ower of many leaves,
to willingly swoon on an almond bed, a birch bed.
But Im engrossed in data, gathering. Let someone gather me
onto his bosom
cold or warm. An outrage, it seems, has
been committed, but the good news, its been proven wrong.
And again in the ashtray a bird utters its visions.
Like a teat of sweetness my heart beats more and still more.
In my mouth melons of words get ripped like chamomile strips.
Look, a horizon lled with character frolics there, a full salamandria.
M AYA BEJ ER A N O
245
Learn from its manner for manna it is

and just as pure.
I emerge from the odor. Fresh narcissi warm in my vessel.
Not accidentally, a rain of narcissi, yellow wasps.
To leap or not? Leap farther like gazelle to gazelle,
a hazy race behind you, dogs ahead and at your heels,
their tails gain up on their snouts,
their tongues a stray hawk. Praying hau hau,
my way got lost in the moon,
my hunger has been decreed for love simple bread
incessantly digesting orchids of rain.
Data Processing #12

for Nissim Aloni
At the rst moment
when I asked myself where in town
I could cry at length without being stopped on the road with a
tease:
What happened, is this what happened to you then,
it shows.
Anxious anticipationa colossal clear runway claimed by me
alone. Everybody traveled in the spirit of her speech. Snickering
killers
bending over something
coiled, like a leap. Just like a dog, not the killers,
its another couple now.
And before this I recoiled.
You said something that broke me to pieces from so much
joy. The night. Distant. A waste.
In the dangerous park lay a wounded manforehead, in the
illuminated rocks;
the ashlights ed to the bright intersection.
In the dark the curve seemed to grow distant, no
transgression met me, I take up
246
your time with imprudence

a great dramatist of fear. Some fool
up the ramp dared touch my face.
Rage mounting with beads up the chest, the corners of the mouth.
The sole of my gait wipes
every step thats been treaded onto forget and feel something
offensive or domineering.
The tickle39 of oblivion soothes and a vicious ying balloon
drags me to the benches. It is again the clanking umbrella that got
lost.
I dissolve from the south of town to the north
looking for it. A large palm
is about to stop its ight, to cool my ardor
with the assertion: This emptiness and void
is a dangerto pierce and to silence. NightmaresM-a-y-a
let your fancy run free . . . fancy;
funny fancy. . . .
Data Processing #14

Run.
Run quickly. Before the town disappears on you,
heavy.
A short-circuit cast darkness in the walls. This is
a moment they want to rob me of. A tugging shout or a shove,
a mission, a miss. I ed with the edict of silence
not to speak twelve hours. My conscience is cloaked with sickness
and cold.
My room expires in its beauty. Stamens sink
in my hands, a bottle is tossed from my window,
leaving me mixed up with a drink, celebrating, and deep blue
velvet. Youd better buy me todaythe incident
between the town and its strangler. Dont liken it to anything
beautiful,
it is after all a rare expensive stage design reaching its peak:
39. In the Hebrew, Bejerano playfully combines the words tickle and grammar.
M AYA BEJ ER A N O
247
the divergence of streets,

the exit of people into houses,
the innite hats
and the encounters at the painted corners
the curtsies before gates and courts
and lanes just an adventure with who knows whom?
I forgot to speak with intent before sunset
to go where the role waits for me
gliding.
Im hungry, outcast, and a memory of pounding smiles,
and the muscle strain of a maid
toiling in the dark some time before dusk,
a mistake. Between her and herself
lark is her name.
Lust
Layered in owers on bedclothes
intermittently rumpled and taut to the air
coming in through the curtain and wrapping us;
it caught us bare-assed exposed to lust,
harried, bent over, buttoning up,
tying shoe-laces;
we said:
we have to buy and smooth out
we have to mop and discard
we must arrange and x
we must go we must nd out
we must wash and check
we must clear and air
and discard again
until in the round sloping stomach
down the pelvis and brown skin
a tide swelled in rapid damp steps
like rain drops in shuddering stealth
ordering us to remove some of our clothing,
248
off the tongue and face, the shoulders,

the waist, the center of the chest
and genitals
and from the long leg muscles there rose
a quiver of strain
time after time after time
Dont Stop the Motion

Dont stop the motion.
Come in with a stiff pointer
and the limp expression
of a barefoot Renaissance Madonna
the smile of a man in mid-life;
well discuss
the connubial positions of lions
and tigresses, moist twisted tongues,
ravenous teeth,
a couple of tender howls
and the whole sex business is done
Enter with a taut pointer
and say with a limp expression:
I want to sleep with you, dear.
A barefoot Renaissance Madonna,
a woman in her prime, fragile,
at times hot at times cold.
Passion-Dress
Rings of blossoms opened orange brown and red
and our body sprang as a statue
M AYA BEJ ER A N O
249
of soft substance; we mold our lives with great artistry,

stay at home, move within its eager walls.
What is this mysterious work
performed by a master artist?
One must obey his instructions,
but, in fact, the two of us are stronger.
Isnt he our friendly deatha worn-out bell
we tangle with while making love
on the oor, on a nomads straw mat,
having stripped off our clothes and donned a new dress,
a passion-dress, and made a hut,
a dream-hut, the form of matter.
The Hands of Autumn

The deluding seducing warmth of autumn
is short
disrobing like a fashionable hanger dress;
and the pine nerves of the city all around
arching threads in mourning
growing gray against a pinkish, darkening backdrop
before vanishing toward evening.
Slim handcuffs close on the loud
blue heart, and beyond
the sea drops and hides
facing a sea of blue air above.
And I fancy myself as the white
quivering esh of the oyster
lying on a stone bench
an earth basket
reected in the eyes of a glorious god
as I diminish
in the hands of time
250
A Galilean Landscape, Important to Note

A rectangle that is a doorframe in a hotel room,
important to note
a suite of two smallish rooms, one of a million just like it.
The Kinneret40 is grayish today.
The horizon merging with clouds, the blue of steel
important to note
I grasped it, at a certain hour, lets say
early noon, possibly morning
and later gradually also late afternoon
of a warm sultry winter
and important to note that I wasnt alone
but beheld the shallow silvery veneer
of the Kinneret that contained in her memory something
important to note
the sweat of the builders on her banks
in elds that did not exist then,
the tears of all those who drowned in her, the voices of the pioneers,
the ripples of shermens paddles, the engines of ships,
the cries of pleasure and thrill
important to note
of tourists, shouts of dining pilgrims,
all was bound and stored in her depths
peels and remnants of meat and charcoal, bread crumbs, empty
wrappers
and the sh, important to note,
were wonderful and resentful.
I stood at the level of the seagulls trust
not alone
in the doors rectangle the brilliance of the sun still blinds
from the room in the small hotel suite
an idea is tossed, a seagull is mercilessly crushed
important to note
40. The Sea of Galilee.
M AYA BEJ ER A N O
251
that in the last minute the seagull was borne in the rescue net of
my gaze
important to note
at the edge of the closing line of the Kinneret
well marked and always ominousdepending on the season
the look in her eyes and her will
one could see bougainvillea shoots and dense bulrush stalks
a lake in dark green, and the rot of owers,
stone pebbles as jetty
and the presence of palm trees invited one
to be buried there
important to note.
Pecan Leaves
1.
The pecan leaves were just
a backdrop
the pecan leaves were the late
backdrop that came later
and before the backdrop of the pecan leaves
there had been a myriad faces
wishing for multitudes
(like the apples of love-sick Shulamit)41
I cannot give the exact number.
Faces near and distant
faces from up-close and far away
faces expected to arrive faces gone by
we were all entwined in some presence
quite rare
friends intertwined in the presence of
lets say music
strains of some light music
Clark and Humel Korsakov and Bach
the Beatles and Gershwin.
41. Shulamit of The Song of Songs.
252
The piano keys strode up and down

the fat chords of the contrabass teased in their low tones
and the trumpeter who resembled the shadowy Father Frolo,
and so the medieval church of Notre Dame
immediately leaps to mind, thanks to Tzvia,
the trumpeter attired like the court musician in the palace
adding to the twining process
the stain of the effort visible on his lip.
I try very hard
to continue playing
keep up the pitch
and the train of faces grows heavy and is turned already
into pearls white pearls
the sun in a blunt angle beyond the right-angled,
ltered, radiating simply, humbly.
About 2pm,
given to description with no difculty:
Luzit, The Terebinth Valley, Agur,
a stone structure towering above
a Turkish bath
acacia trees spectacular in yellow
olive branches and carob.
I want to go back
to the white pearls behind
go back
not because I left a snake there
or a mouse;
a cool breeze entered to blow
the notes
and someone hastened to grab them
with his switched-off cellular phone.
But we havent smelled the blood yet
(not the blood of the Maccabees)42
we only played played
and paid attention
to how the musicians whipped the air near us
playing with us.
42. Name of a ower.
M AYA BEJ ER A N O
253
2.
The pecan leaves will be
the pecan leaves are about to be
a backdrop any minute
any minute in the backdrop;
they sat with their backs to the backdrop, just like that,
Eliezers old parents and he next to them
facing their house thats about to crumble
about to crumble for decades now,
like them, and that was the main subject.
Three people in a stream of afternoon light
pecan leaves as backdrop
resting in their exact spot
and the silence silence
even when appropriate felt intense.
And the silence stirred up
the scent of blood
254
RONNY SOMECK
(b. 1951)
Ronny Someck was born in Baghdad, arrived in Israel in 1953,

and lives in Ramat Gan. He studied Hebrew literature and
Jewish philosophy at Tel Aviv University and drawing at the
Avni Academy of Art. He has published eight volumes of poetry,
and his work has appeared in anthologies and magazines in the
United States, South America, and Europe. Two selections of his
work have appeared in Arabic. He has participated in international
poetry festivals in Israel, the United States, and Europe, and
in 1992 he attended the Iowa International Writing Program.
Artwork based on his poems has been exhibited at the Artist
Museum, Lodz, Poland; the Um-El-Fahem Gallery, Israel, and in
Gubbio, Italy, and his work has been set to music by Elliot Sharp,
produced by Tzadik Records (Zorn). His awards include ACUMs
50th Anniversary Award for Special Achievement, the Prime
Minister Award, and the Amichai Award. Someck works as a
counselor with street gangs and teaches literature and writing. The
poems appearing here are from his 1996 collection Rice Paradise
Selected Poems 19761996.
Dog After Dog

Tonight I enumerate silence after silence deep in the earth,
traveling as if from one site of despair to the next
and the wind kneads the earth into hill upon hill
like in the bodies of the girls in my school-days
when we sat like a family chair next to chair
255
and their breasts gradually swelled on their chests

their nipples pricking the air in class,
and I locked my gaze on their stomachs
trembling with shame.
Tonight I enumerate silence after silence deep in the earth
and theres a dark green in the water forbidden to drink
and rabies in dogs a couple of barks away
and theres light in their eyes and their feet bleed ice
their hairs bristle
and they ee from me dog after dog.
Tonight I enumerate silence after silence deep in the earth
and black hairs rip my face
and hard barks sit in my throat
an inoculation tag around my neck
and the night is cold
the night is cold
Greek Music
The ying machines of nature can be launched with brandy, too.
Safety belts are fastened to lost memories,
and in the open air, between pulling the cork and the last swig,
there arent many ways to pass the night.
And tonight not one bird came back from the cold to the lands of
warmth
to my windowsill.43
Such a fading darkness,
the odor of surgery runs through the words
and on the spread wings of a sudden breeze
Greek music is played softly.
43. Alludes to a famous line in a Bialik poem: Welcome back, sweet bird, / from the
lands of warmth to my window.
256
Solo
In my alcohol-stream blood ows as well.
My hands are weak
and tonight across my face squats the sorrow of predators.
In coffee houses people lose their skin, lose color,
pavements generate currents
and the trees have names which remained in nature class.
He who loves is more loving than loving,
he who strikes a match challenges the wind,
and a soldier who came back from a base in northern Sinai
left the oxygen of her lungs in the oxygen of mine.
Words are devoured in the sorrow of predators,
brandys diluted with ice and tap water,
and longings are a light burning in the bedroom,
an Elvis record,
the clasp of a bra.
A Soldier in the Desert. A Romance in Photos

The letter from her beau didnt spray eau-de-cologne on her face.
She wanted to weep as she changed from army fatigues
into jeans and an Indian shirt.
On her tape-recorder, on the wicker table, the tape of depression
was already spinning. A woman
sang, You come to me like a ame
then give me the cold shoulder.
You must break the bones, she thought, of he who does a thing
like that.
In the meantime, from the window, the desert seemed like a
cross-breeding of a mound of sand
and an electric wire in heat from a crows touch.
And the crow?
It is the gynecologist of this landscape.
RON N Y SOM ECK
257
All summer she stalked it, in the dark, as it landed

on the plot of grass, lascivious
like a common concubine.
Johnny
The news of Johnny Weissmullers death was broadcast in the military jeep
on the way to Beit-Lid.
The head that was turned to the jungles found the orchards of the
Sharon.
In January 84 even an orchard is an attraction,
even a sprinkler or
a pitchfork.
Nothing to be done, the Land of Israel doesnt live here anymore.
From the sted heart of Rabbi Yehudah Halevy remains the body
and in a basement in a street bearing his name I can
tell a girl: You turn me on.
And she: If youre turned on let me see your engine.
What a great world
with death leaps from branch to branch
and wintry birds hiding in the horizon
as if in womens lingerie.
From a Distance the Tombstones Look Like

a Flock of Storks
For N, in memoriam
From a distance the tombstones look like a ock of storks
or a troupe of pigeons some Yemenite trained for the opening
ceremony of the fth or sixth Maccabiah.
At night, when the pigeons ew home, N shot
stones at them, bringing down
258
two or three.
The skies were clear of stars. They were named
Lennon, Joplin or Hendrix, who then played along the watch-tower.
In the south of Tel Aviv, a friend of Ns was dying, a jazz pianist.
On the stereo
Billie Holiday cut her skirt shorter by ve centimeters. She was
very photogenic in one of the streets near Levinsky.
By the way, how do you translate junk into Hebrew?
And why do I link this question to a cemetery?
I could have just as easily asked it about somebody else, alive.
No. Death in war drives the sick memory
in an ambulance. Stretchers and sirens. If its a true alarm
rising and falling sirens will howl.
Ns sister came here for the eighth time wearing
the same dress. Black satin in a cut that highlights
her neck.
If a silver platter is required at all
let them, please, serve vodka as well,
so we could drink to the memory of the piece of paper he had at
fourteen,
listing the names of girls who had begun to wear a bra.
I was the only one who knew about this,
now Im the one who can remember it.
Handcuffs. Street Poem

They put handcuffs on his hands because theres no love in the
world.
He stole a sprinkler
so that the cops would come and look for him
under the bed and show him
what its like to steal a sprinkler when you dont even have a lawn.
Neither does he have a father, and his mother is a line
in the social workers log.
What a pair of legs on that social worker,
white as the cream cheese they served every morning at the home,
the one who told him how nicely he drew a crow
RON N Y SOM ECK
259
and on that same day he went to the Armenian in the Old City
to get one tattooed on his muscle, as if his hand
were a wall in an ancient cave.
Great wings you could see in it
and eyes
and a head inclined toward the sky
the ceiling of the penitentiary.
Poverty Line
As if you could draw a line and say: Below it, poverty.
Heres the bread that with cheap make-up pencils
turned dark
as well as the olives in the small plate
on the tablecloth.
In the air, pigeons ew in a salute formation
to the ringing bell of the parafn vendor in his red wagon,
to the sound of rubber boots treading mud.
I was a boy in a house they called a hut,
in a neighborhood they called Maabara.44
The only line I saw was the horizon under which it was all
poverty.
Jasmine. A Poem on Sandpaper

Fairuz lifts her lips
to the sky
let it shower jasmine
on those who once met
and didnt know they were in love.
I listen to her sing in the Fiat of Muhammad
in the noon street of Ibn Gabirol.
44. Transitory camps built in the early 1950s by the government, housing mostly refugee
Jews from Arab lands.
260
A Lebanese singer singing in an Italian car

driven by an Arab poet from Baqa-al-Garbiyye
in a street named after a Hebrew poet in medieval Spain.
And the jasmine?
If it drops from the skies of Armageddon
it will turn
for a moment
into a green
light
at the next intersection.
Autumn. A French Movie

Autumn is a French invention
written on a mans face who comes into the neighborhood butcher
saying he doesnt have a title for the book he wrote.
Do you have trumpets in the book? inquires the butcher.
No.
Drums?
No.
So call itNo Drums No Trumpets.
Later, a yellow Prvert leaf drops
on the gold chain around the neck of a dozing cat
and rst rain sits on its tail
like the beginning of a bark.
Tear45 Comptroller Report

In the school of weeping
they teach the tear to sing a lullaby in the eyes of the toddlers.
With a wet foot, the tear glides into the sandbox
and hitches reins on the hollow horses.
45. In the Hebrew, tear and state rhyme.
RON N Y SOM ECK
261
It is already quite clever to scribble on the walls

to hide at the scary moments
in a fairy tale. The teeth of lions scar its throat
and the good fairies place a stamp of love
on the envelope of its body.
For a moment it is a target, stuck like a scarecrow in a shooting
gallery.
A bird of re pokes holes in the cardboard of its heart
and drips from its beak virgin blood.
Thirty Seconds to Charge the Nipple

We had thirty seconds to charge the nipple
it was a mound
jutting at the edge of the obstacle course in basic training.
Above it, the skys collar was ironed with the starch of clouds
and the khaki of its dunes could be, in a different landscape, a line
in a nature poem.
But where is a poem and where is nature
when two canteens bounce on your waist
a Uzi in your hand
and a shovel along your spine.
All you could do was to feast in fantasy on the nipples
of the squadrons clerk who always lounged
in the commanders jeep
and recall the painter Gauguin debating whether to eat the chicken
he had or to paint it.
There, facing the hill, we were very hungry.
Tractors
The sons of Doctor Mengele sell tractors
on the route between Munich and Stuttgart.
He who buys them will plough the earth
262
water a tree
paint the roof tiles red
and during the beer festival will watch how the bars band
is positioned in the square like tin soldiers in a window.
In historys beauty-parlor they know how to comb a curl
even in the hair
of a monster.
Lions Milk
My grandfather was born in the lands of arrack
and on the labels of bottles lions were painted with combed manes
and posing as lambs.
This is the king of the forest, his nger would tremble
and in his skinny mustache the wind would draft the longitude
and latitude of the jungle I dreamed of.
Lucky I got lost,
or else Jack Daniels would have been my father
and gin would have rocked the cradle of tonic in my throat.
And only in the empty bottles I wanted to toss in the sea
I hid in his memory a short note
drunk with love.
Poem to a Girl Already Born

On the day you were born the workers of joy
warmed their hands against the re lit
with the match of your life.
Night after night I am possessed with the sound of your breath
as if it were the glimmer of a lighthouse for a sailor who was
almost devoured
by the oceans teeth.
RON N Y SOM ECK
263
In Answer to a Question: When Did Your Peace Begin?

On the wall in the caf near the Maabara
they had hung David Ben Gurion with his wind-challenging hair
and next to him, in a similar frame, the doughy face
of Umm Kulthoum.
It was the year 55 or 56, and I thought that if they hang
a man and a woman side by side
they must be husband and wife.
A Pound of Child
At the collection depot for orphans they weigh pounds of life
remaining in store for a child in Rwanda.
His hands grip the hook of the scale
his feet up in the air as if he were an acrobat
in the Olympics of shame.
Blues on the Life That Was Almost Mine

I was born in Virginia. From my adoptive father, a judge whose
rulings
were blackened by payoffs, I learned to chew tobacco and reach for
the point
where the spine of girls ends.
One night I stole the keys to the Chevrolet and drove it
all the way to Atlanta. I lived in the car and nights I folded
my clothes into a pillow on the back seat. Once, when they caught
me
pissing against the wheels and ned me fty bucks I told
the judge the sky is the ceiling, the bumper a toilet.
One day, my lawful father arrived at the restaurant where I worked.
He looked at me,
and I stitched eyes with a magic needle Id always kept
in the pocket of longing.
264
If this story werent true, it could have been planted

in a song by Johnny Cash, but I, who brush my teeth
ve times a day to remove tobacco stains, disgorge
all the Johnny Cashes into the same sink where I retched up
Virginia.
Where will the bomb drop, sings Roger Waters on the taperecorder
and it dawns on me I cant obliterate from my thoughts the gun
my adoptive father kept in a drawer.
Not a cloud darkened
or dropped
in this poem. I was then
the philosopher of the moment
when you pour coffee in a motel
and the blond waitress wants
to drown you in sugar.
Why are you wearing a bra, I once asked someone like her,
and she said her breasts, like my life, are a st
you must cover with a glove.
P.S. Blues on the True Life
I wasnt born in Virginia. My father was a bar of silence
across his lips.
Since his death I stalk him from the back seats
of bus number 61.
Memory stops at the stations, opens the door,
rings the bell, totters when it cannot nd a seat.
Under the wheels pounds a heart of asphalt
and I on the pavements
still beat my heels like a whip.
Rice Paradise
My grandmother forbade leaving rice on the plate.
Instead of telling about hunger in India and kids
with distended bellies who would gobble every grain,
with a scraping fork she gathered the remains
RON N Y SOM ECK
265
to the center of the plate and with eyes practically tearing

would recount how the uneaten rice would rise up
to complain to God.
Now she is dead and I imagine the happy encounter
between her false teeth and the guardians of the sword
at the gate of rice paradise.
Under her feet theyll unfold a red rice carpet,
and a yellow rice sun will beat
on the pale bodies of the beauties in the garden.
My grandmother will rub olive oil onto their skin and slip
them one by one into the cosmic pots in Gods kitchen.
Grandma, I feel like telling her, rice is a seashell that contracted
and you, like it, were ejected
from the sea of my life.
266
HAVA PINHAS-COHEN
(b. 1955)
Hava Pinhas-Cohen was born in Israel and lives in Jerusalem. She

studied Hebrew literature and art history at Hebrew University
and has published six volumes of poetry. A poet, translator, and
literary critic, she also edits the periodical Dimui, which is devoted
to literature, art, and Jewish culture. Her awards include the Prime
Minister Award, the Kugel Award, and the Alterman Award. She
has participated in several international poetry festivals, and her
poems have been published in English, French, German, Spanish,
Serbian-Croatian, and Chinese. The poems appearing here are
from her collections The Passage of the Doe (1994) and A River
and Forgetfulness (1998).
Explicitly Named46
All have already gone to the mountain, waiting,
waiting to see, waiting very quietly,
even the donkeys and camels are unusually calm,
in this stillness not a bird chirped,
nor children on their fathers shoulders,
the silence unbearable as if before
a great and terrible thing
and I still wanted
to hang the laundry to dry
46. The title also means Ineffable Name, alluding to the ineffable name of God.
267
make time for myself to freshen up

and I warmed the babys milk so it wont starve
wont cry, God forbid, at the wrong moment
how much longer until it is all over. Waiting
for the laundry to dry and the baby, who knows.
Nobody knew
and I saw that a light breeze
like the breath of a sleeping man
went through the wash, swelling
the belly of my nightgown
and the Sabbath tablecloth
became a white sail in the middle of the desert
and we went from there upon the blue
far away to a place
where well split pomegranates and suck their juice
to a place where love is
explicitly named.
On the Eve of the Holiday

1.
Cracking the bones of her turreted crooked neck
and down her spine
I plunged a sharp black-bladed knife
into the damp soft supple skin
between her thighs. (A job well done.)
I pulled her legs apart
and then her folded wings
(alongside her white body, paler than ever)
and then I washed my hands
off the chicken of my sins
for the holiday soup.
And the blessed aroma of carrots, onions, celery,
potatoes, dill and spices and chicken feet
lled the rooms.
268
2.
Six pomegranates in an Armenian porcelain bowl
adorned in cobalt and Cabalistic blue. Six pomegranates
with reddish cheeks soothe my eyes,
my soul. My hands are scarlet with pomegranate juice,
my hands are clean. I swear.
In the yard someone fastens one log to another
to create a temporary shade
and someone else cuts into the foundation of my house.
For, at night, between the slackening walls,
theres the clamor of columns of brown ants
penetrating the cupboards
and in the corners pale-legged spiders
are building their homes, laying hairy eggs
as if weve already left behind
empty rooms.
Fear
Each child emerged, a bag of fruit in its hand,
one fruit of the land, one fruit of man,
and he blessed. The rays of the sun
and the moon and all the earths minerals
went through the child,
and while Sultanina raisins as translucent
as citrus honey, and walnuts, ridged
in a human puzzle, and almonds enfolded
as a secret shell, and a dried g whose seeds
appear like golden coins, a honeyed treasure,
made their way in a palm shut into a childish st
a tectonic collapse took place in me
hollow spaces and caves
stalactites and stalagmites formed
for a meeting of above and below
such wondrous inconceivable colors, I swear,
H AVA P IN H A S-COHEN
269
tumbled in a great din,

like knights with the clamor of armor,
and the caves ceiling tumbled with them.
And when the door closed and the last step receded
I vomited fears
into a white baby tub.
Fifteen of Shevat, 5753 (1993)47
Variable Texture
Just when we believed He was generous to us
allowing us free nights for love
Im pure pure from my toes and up
much water poured over my face48
(all the while we were very busy
erecting protective walls to safeguard a dream
against any potential gusts
writing contracts signed by a notary
entangling each other all the more)
and for many days no person
burst out of me, and Im utterly limp
like a Rubens female.
Back then we didnt have the sense
to sniff one another
to rest the tongue
on the skin of the other
console the variable texture
of our lives.
And I wept for the wisdom He imparted the body
to set seasons in a world enclosed within.
47. Jewish Arbor Day, a festive day for young schoolchildren.
48. Alludes to the mikveh, a ritual bath each bride must submit to by Jewish and
state law.
270
Boundaries
And you said that my boundaries
have narrowed that my eyes which were wide open
their slats squeak their gaze
shut behind glass
And you said with derision that my tongue had sunk
to lick dirt
And I rose and folded the four corners of the earth
to place under my head for if I can no longer
walk the earth
Ill lie49 with her
And nights letters will rise from me
and soar like angels
from my raging body
and never again will you say to me
something
I cant bear to hear
Time
Its time to enter50
pregnancy
dive with bent knees
into the belly into
the amniotic uid
eyes shut
observe as time is set apart
49. In idiomatic (and biblical) Hebrew, to lie with someone has strong sexual
connotations.
50. In Hebrew, the idiom for getting pregnant can be literally translated as go
into pregnancy. With the addition of the preposition inside, the poet changes the
meaning to enter (inside) pregnancy.
271
in slow motion
like the cloudy pungent odor
which lingers after
the skin is torn from the orange
the woman from her fetus
as it slides in slow motion into the world
from an accretion of pain
like an image from its God
a gaze from His eyes
Piet
For Ruth Carton-Blum
There was a moment when she held me on her knees
and her knees were my home
and her knees were a table
and her knees were an altar
and her knees were a place to be small in
what I saw beyond her shoulder
what she saw beyond mine
that precise moment I cant recollect
But I shut my eyes to see
myself supporting her on my knees
and her arms drop at my sides
my mothers eyes looking into mine
my eyes looking into hers
and she tells me to cover myself at night
and I tell her to go on and on and on
as calcium escapes her bones
her esh dwindles on my knees
and I reach my hand
to raise her
upward
272
The Way to the River

At the same time we arrived under the three trees
on the riverbank. One woman after another
arrived, a kerchief over her head,
white garments in her basket, churned butter
and garlic bread just baked.
One woman after another we came from the streets,
the windows, the backyards,
and arrived on the appointed day
the day of the end of menstruation.
We coordinated with each other the day, the hour,
using herb tea, sage and nettles, brewed
in beet juice extracted from the clods.
Three days after Sukkoth
we probed each other
like a blind watchmaker
familiar with the mechanism.
We immersed then sat for a while
on the bank with shining eyes
women through whom age navigates
like thread through beads
like a simple stitch.
We sat, reddish brown or dark mud on our heads
and the murmur of water
like the murmur of speech
already bespoke
the following year.
A Hand Empty of Body

Red stains on the palm of the right hand
the red henna stained us in the same spot
where they mark you with a cross
for good luck, to betroth the girls,
to bear a male child.
273
And while I shake out the bedclothes

very ne feathers oat in the light
streaming in through the slats
I pull cases off pillows
haul a owery blanket from the warmth
of childrens bodies
and a taciturn cat goes through the rooms
toward the milk we gave it
while
a hand empty of body
struck the glass pane of the Lepidus family
on Sarei Israel Street, or King George Street,
or Queen Shlomzion Street.
Listen, lend an ear, heres an ear,
severed from the head,
poised to listen,
and a leg with a gaping knee
landed in the sandbox.
A shoe of an infantryman, worn
and tightly laced, split right
from left, and a solitary eye
left its place, like in a Picasso painting
here it is, hovering above,
watching over the House of Israel.
The objects are identiable
horrifyingly familiar
a small distance between
the sanctication of the Name
(in Magenza or Kishinev)
and Its desecration
in His holy city
made in His image.
I searched the words
to bring me into chambers
with an anxious motion
274
to touch and feel the living esh

of my children
give thanks for the respite the lull
give thanks for my life
sprouting like a small consolation
from the tilled stied
soil of the window-box.
And heres a string
of horribly lame words
casting a shadow against
a bright sun and an almond-tree
in full bloom51 (what else).
51. Alludes to a popular childrens song.
275
AMIR OR
(b. 1956)
Amir Or was born in Tel Aviv. A poet, translator, and editor, he

studied philosophy and comparative religion at Hebrew University,
where he later lectured on ancient Greek religion. He is the
author of seven volumes of poetry, and his volume, The Song of
Tahira (2001), is a ctional epic in metered prose. His poems
have been published in more than thirty languages, as well as in
volumes in Ireland, France, Poland, Romania, and Macedonia.
His collection, Day, was published by Dedalus (2006), and his
collection, The Museum of Time, is forthcoming in Israel and in
the United Kingdom. He has published articles on poetry, classic
studies, and religious studies, has taught poetry in universities in
Israel, in the United Kingdom, and in Japan, and has published
several books of translations into Hebrew, including The Gospel
of Thomas and an anthology, Erotic Greek Poetry. In 1990, he
founded the Helicon Society and has been editor in chief of
Helicons journal and of a series of poetry books. In 1993, he
set up the Arabic-Hebrew Helicon Poetry School. He founded
and directed the Shaar International Poetry Festival and is the
national coordinator of the UN-sponsored Poets for Peace. His
awards include the Prime Minister Award, the Bernstein Award,
and a Fulbright Award, as well as fellowships at the University of
Iowa, the University of Oxford, and the Heinrich Boll Foundation,
among others. He received for his translations the honorary prize
of the Israeli minister of culture. The poems appearing here are
from his collections Face (1991), Ransoming the Dead (1994), and
Poem (1996).
276
276
A Pint of Beer
The perfect murder has no cause, he said,
the perfect murder requires only a perfect object,
as it was then, in Auschwitz,
not the crematories, of course,
but as it was later, after hours, he said,
falling silent,
gazing at the froth,
sipping.
The perfect murder is love, he said.
The perfect murder doesnt wish for perfection,
only to give
as much as you can.
Even in the memory of gripping the throat, life is still
an eternity. Even the cries that cradled my hand,
even the piss that fell like grace on cold esh,
even the heel of the boot that stirred yet another innity,
even the stillness,
he said.
Gazing at the froth.
True, a decent arbeit macht frei,
but a perfect murder wastes
not even one drop.
Like the lips of a child, he explained,
like froth and sand,
like you
listening
sipping, listening.
From the White Dictionary

It never began, you know, the sea was like the sea, the waves
clamored for the devouring sand, the sea was rough, some drowned
A M IR OR
277
and, after a week, time was garbled, nights shufed like cards,
at the beach-caf, coffee was billed in the sand, he said. I come
from the rain forests, thats where I wanted to begin,
but in the night
a storm in the oak trees bore me
until a dull tree trunk advanced on me, I couldnt turn, its spikes
tore my face, I apped over like a trapped bird, my hair,
then my hands, entangled like snakes.
That night, birds nested in my palms. Blinded, I embraced
a dark trunk, spread my arms, my ngers
turned into wood against the wind, I was Dryad, and he
smiled, uncomprehending, yet his teeth bloomed a painful white.
Perhaps there was still time to halt, perhaps, but forests
spilled from mountains and stars burned, shimmering on the road,
inconspicuously, his hand slipped under my shirt and the air stiffened,
near cracking, near scalding
when he touched, trees took re from wind,
bright billboards warned re, tongues of re
licked my groin, my foot trembled on the accelerator,
stars sparked from the wheels, the car, it seems,
knew the way, until all at once it stopped between houses of stone.
The garden gate stood open, the sky hung low and blue, resting
on top of poplar branches, the wind ceased, stars
approached yet closer, trembled among the leaves, we craved
slowly
like the ocean swells on island shores, and monkeys
climb to treetops to taste the ripened moon.
We joined tails in a last-gasp effort,
nuts shattered on the bed.
He smiled like a sore, licking salt and staring, his eyes
burned holes of bullets, his skin long tongues, his cock
boiled and howled, have you ever heard a howling cock?
While every cell in my body danced overjoyed, neighbors screamed
this music is too loud,
he did not stop even when the walls jerked and twisted and waves
278
overowed from mirrors onto the bed, I pleaded please, enough, Im

dying,
he took no pity, deep inside Im dying, the walls
collapsed like sinking cotton, neighbors
leaped from windows, their pockets bulging with peanuts, and hung
like monkeys from oak branches, some woman still attempted to
salvage
the laundry, but already the building tilted on its side, plants, brushes,
chicken parts kept crashing, hitting some and, of course, there was a
commotion,
he bled and smiled at me, dimming among the soft ruins, and a
moment before
the oak tree was on the room I saw him leap, all green,
too late for me
to stop dying.
No Trail Markers
No trail markers. Mother will never come back.
Weeping inward, into the blood.
Independence Day in the land of lost children.
No-ow-ers here, no-ow-ers here, a steam engine goes up my
spine.
One lone car bounds behind, I hop inside, shutting doors,
load a last bullet.
Shrieking Indians charge
and I wipe them out, one by one,
with turpentine-soaked cotton.
The car plunges off the collapsing bridge.
At the sides of my throat
I quickly sprout trembling gills,
carefully tread among the water lilies.
Kelp and seaweed spring in my hair;
I have no reason to go outside.
A M IR OR
279
A girl in a red dress rises from her grave.

She captures my wings in her hula-hoop,
my long, ashy, uttering wings.
She draws the hoop around my waist,
pulls me into the night.
On the castles turrets owls howl bitterly.
Someone chuckles, lights a pipe.
Obvious technique. A cluster of spider-webs and primed nightmares.
But palpable fears of plastic, from the day before he knew how
to speak,
tear the corners of his mouth
and the northern fort crashes on him in a sea-roar.
On my knees snails awake with rst rain
and crawl up, toward my groin,
cold and damp.
An old Chinese monk
crumbles into wise dust.
The astrologer whose back gave out long ago
is content observing the reections of stars in the pond.
The corrugated water confounds his divinations
yet he doesnt stop shouting them.
Hes afraid of the silence of the sh.
I toss the stick and papyrus into the Nile
and my nger keeps writing upon the water.
Hatshepsut puts on the mask of spite,
quaintly steps down to bathe in the river.
Behind her a procession of temple maidens,
bearing their song to the man sleeping in the dark.
The torches in their hands cast their shadows
on my esh hidden in the bulrush,
and the fear collects green grass
on my back.
With the staff in her hand Hatshepsut reaches
for the diamond between my shoulder blades
280
and IOh, please, let me have my name back!

drift from dream to dream.
A slender boy unfastens the chains on my chilled limbs.
He paints my eyes blue, anoints my arms with cinnabar.
With translucent hands he wraps around my loins a gold-etched
belt:
A sharp whistle rips through the porch
and it crushes forever.
Four medics in white get hold of me;
but I nd myself in the rain, shaking,
only an unbuttoned coat on my bare skin.
Synopsis
You put on your gorgeous
fornicating body
wear it like a tiger
wears its pounce.
I dig in your wound
toward the capsule of morphine
splash in the gorgeous plague
squirt meta-pain sparks
into the inamed frame,
bounce from trampoline of skies
taut to the limit
shoot
a last rain
denitely last. Now
a long shot
roams the nebulas of esh;
now it is permissible
to fold the skies
break the frame
A M IR OR
281
edit memories
pay.
Like a tiger its pounce
I take off your gorgeous
fornicating body.
Immortal
Three chefs labored
ushing out the innards,
stufng shrimps, mushrooms.
It took a dozen egg yolks
a bottle of dry sherry
twenty cloves of garlic
salt, pepper, herbs,
a pound of butter and
despite the precise recipe hed left
some air and improvisation.
Three hours in the oven,
a white tablecloth, red candles,
a green salad, champagne.
What can I say?
He released the tongue but forbade the eulogy.
As in his life, he was esh and blood;
dead, delectable and loved.
Poem52
Seed sown in sand awaits the rain for years
1.
This poem will be the poem of another century no different from
this one
to be secreted safely beneath the ruins of words until
52. Six sections from the book-length cycle Poem.
282
among the last grains of sand in the hourglass

like a ship in a bottle, it is beheld, this poem
that speaks of innocence; and mere people, supposedly
wrought by time, like tarrying gods
will listen to it for no reason that hasnt been there before,
rousing their backs like snakes
from the rubble. It will no longer have a place
to bolt from
other than its beginning. Not poor, not afuent,
it no longer deigns to make promises
nor keep them, nor carry out its own word,
nor economize, nor sail away from here to there.
This poem, if it speak to you, woman, wont call out,
Muse, honey, and wont lie with you as did its forebears.
And if it speak to you, man, it wont subdue, crush, wont
make up
its face, wont disrobe its words its esh, for it has no
has no whys. Maybe now Ill call for it, this wicked poem
of the century; here, sick in health it hardly walks,
drags its feet in the viscid tide of trendy thoughts,
or pauses to review the paperwork, taking stock of its baubles
in rhymed arithmetic. The inventory: owers, paperclips,
corpses (yes, not to worry), tall glasses. After the clips,
butteries, too, numerous footprints and other hooks and shelves
to counter learned critical claims, and just for the hell of it:
tooth to tooth, with the abandon of a grinning chameleon, unaware
that her colors have long since turned fable. Or, with unfathomable
calm
A M IR OR
283
try someone elses luck, with endless games of

back and forth, meaningless, except, lets say,
for a bit of fun, lasting a line. Smear orange on blue
of evening skies: now whitewash a little cloud, mount it,
look down: sea of sea, sand of sand.
Or ngers: ten worms, disjointed,
move with untold grace. Now they surround
a ball whose roundness is awed, wondrous, eshy. Furthermore,
youre allowed to speak (This is a fruit, they call it
peach). These words are full of avor, a avor of being,
of sound accompanying sight with wonder,
not with the sound of a slamming thought. And thats the poem:
it sings, lets say, to tar, stuck to a foot on the beach,
to plastic bottles, to its own words. It
sees only: black on white, translucent or grainy.
It is no less naked than you, not more; with just that precision,
immeasurable, but against the curves of a mutt,
a potted cyclamen, a hair on the rim of the tub.
The creatures here dont want to know. The creatures
over there who do, could, for now,
be the creatures here, could become this antiquity
that has nothing to say but, Me, me, without limit,
without you. A native dog squats on a step in the afternoon sun
and doesnt distinguish itself from the ies.
Its inside gropes for things, turns outward
3.
Come, take a seat, watch: homes come back and resettle
slowly. The frost ignites on the window pane. Another day.
284
Come, have a seat. Coffee or tea? Sugar, milk? Thats how it goes:
hard-boiled or over-easy. Yogurt or sour cream. Jam or honey.
This life, you cant do with,
you cant do without: morning or evening, man or woman,
hot or coldcome, sit, whats up? The sea and sand
drown in one another, no lifeguard, no intruders,
and I look at you, gripping broken planks,
not even a boat, the situation is uncertain,
the both of us pasted into the same phrase, carrying it further,
each to oneself. Come, have a seat,
tell me: Single or plural. Slavery or liberty. I
or you. Love or. How can you tell. Fear.
Only absently, as we have no shore
no footprints, and the words have a ring and dont,
nor do they signify the images but that which gapes
between them and is gone or never was. Come, have a seat.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions, cream cheese,
seeded rye bread, margarine, salt.
Even if you say: Wait, youre dreamingeven if I examine
my place and deeds, what will change?
In fact, I sit facing the computer now. In fact.
I do itfrom the beginning, all of it. In fact,
youre seated before the page now, you long to reach the
like me. In fact, right this minute, you reach
from inside out, devour the world that never stops
pouring out of you: orange on blue morning skies, a frost
A M IR OR
285
burns on the window pane, a cup of teaall that

youve chosen now and was. So just like that,
choose again: me, for instance,
one breakfast, another day. Here.
When it knows that it crawls, the sloughing happens on

its own
5.
Hold a world. Cigarette, glass, lips,
the weight of your bulk on the seat of the chair, my face,
your face, autumn leaves on the sidewalk, a lunch box, a warm
smell
and ngers that cover you before the day is out.
Now, for a moment, dont hold. Let go. Let them peel
and inhabit whats in you without being so much of a world,
without putting the green on the leaves or on
the memory of palm trees on the beach (next
to that body, boyish, bent over the notebook)
let the leaves scatter on the pavement, rest,
and not be leaves at all, nor cigarette glass
lips. To spread in you like delirium,
like a sea at the beach. And while theyre in you,
switch them off, switch them on again.
Off, on, off, on, and again. Now
do the same with the universe where you are you,
a thing among things. Watch it glide in the regions
of a body, on-off-on and see
what you are. The rest of it is but
a parable. Wewell keep ickering, and in a binary pulse
286
will resume saying nothing to all and sundry

I, you, etc. Why not create a new allegory:
here, weve created this outside. The orange
on blue, the affront, the hope, that which
trembles between us, between being and nothing, between
between and between. Lets call it.
In water, it is a sea-rose. Extends a owers arms, devours
10.
And still were here, well equipped. Feet,
back, biceps, eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin; were here
faces, interiors, neighbors, towns, nations. Were here,
breathing, alive. And what do we learn?
Some say life is its continuity in face of another option,
others sayconquest; some position the equal sign
between life and its absence, and some say life
was given us to serve those
whose life isnt life. I say: You.
And it can be easily explained: night again shrouds
the sights. Bulbs burn in the house. Even in the light theres no gaze
but the one from the mirror, nothing but that which watches me
watching it; and it contains no release only longing, no death but
life. I take from
the warm and the cold, the night enfolds,
and I long for one who sees me through touch,
and I remember nothing. Only this.
More
15.
Therefore, I dont even look at you, and prefer the window.
And the eye, ruling in blacks and grays, pulls back now
A M IR OR
287
to discover here some broken outlines of growth

of one heart not clearly visible.
Like a dry elephant hide, etched with isles, ancient,
the olive tree collects its wrinkles
into the hollow of old curves submerged in shadow,
to stretch again in arcs coarsened by the suns touch. Over there
above the hump of a rind, a baby bends to a nipple,
a rusty nail.
Beyond that I neither look, nor think. How can I
think about leaves turning gray outside in the twilight,
the skies above them, above the glance. How can I
think about the innite and the void now that youre
about to die. And as youre about to die, how can I
not think of you. How to imagine lovers
who have not been, or perhaps lovers who exist.
To think that in this, too, there is thought of you,
and believe in it. Can I be so strong
only because of what youve done to me now. That youre dead.
Tomorrow
Ill write you a few words, an epitaph or at least a note
something poetic, as for example, Here lies a dancer.
And if this is not enough to bury you, of course Ill elaborate:
Water me, Ill write on the marble. Water me,
Im thirsty. Water me and not with water. Water me
and not with clear logic. Water me and not with a name.
Water me and not with wine. Water me and no more,
water me. Beauty is not enough, love wont do, nor God
288
nor this life, nor any life. Water me,

Im thirsty.
Drowning, he breathes spring water
16.
My Narcissus, at last youve adjusted. Youve grown gills
at the side of your neck, and sliding downward
youve sprawled yourself among stalks and water. And the echo
became wave,
the reection a place, and youve looked and looked and looked
at the sky of the water and again
you jumpedout, to me.
And the thunder became silence again, the watera curtain,
the eyemarble. You became me again.
And the echo was voice, the reection face,
and you were relieved.
Come
sit.
A M IR OR
289
TAMIR GREENBERG
(b. 1959)
Tamir Greenberg was born in Tel Aviv. An architect, lecturer,

playwright, and poet, he also dabbles in physics. His work as
a poet and playwright has received many awards, including
the Prime Minister Award, the Luria Award, and the Tel Aviv
Foundation Award. His poems have been translated and published
in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, German, and Russian. His
new play, Hebron, was staged in 2007 by HabimaIsraels national
theaterand will be staged by the Schauspielhaus, in Hamburg,
Germany. The poems appearing here are from his collections
Self-Portrait with Quantum and a Dead Cat (1993) and The Thirsty
Soul (2002).
Ode
More than anything I hated death.
No, not death. The dead. I mean,
just one dead. I mean, a dark-haired boy.
I meanI didnt hate. I loved.
Please, you who travel north along the shore,
driving past dark sh farms, your headlights bright:
press down the accelerator and y, turn on
the radio and cheerfully listen to the power
coursing through the electric wires
for he was alive my friend, he walked among you,
290
290
and his love of life was ercer

than the destructive might of the dead.
For a time I awaited his return, then I stopped.
His face, which meant the essence of my life,
was brushed with oblivion. I was lonely without him.
No, not lonely. Puzzled. I mean
my love for him grew stronger.
Yet, as I step barefoot across the decaying earth
confounded by the craftiness of the material world,
as I see a run-over dog lying at the curb
a family of worms nourishing on his liver,
as I listen to the drone of life swarming in lawns,
pubs, department stores and soccer elds
where each individual is carved in a skillful pattern,
as I try to imagine a colossal chain
where theres room for the conqueror, the creator,
the clown and the one eager to be born
in a plentiful stream of easy vitality
then I no longer wish to know
if theres a name to the pattern, its meaning,
and what is grander: the living or its end.
Please, you who quiver at this moment at the heart of nothingness
anxious to charge the threshold of the third millennium
thirsting to experience the pleasure of breathing,
you, who anticipate with a uttering heart journeys
to worlds the eye hasnt seen,
you, who would impart reason to matter,
would freeze fragile tissue,
would quantify spirit in equations,
you, who would work for a living,
would mourn your dead,
would drown your sorrows in drugs
fuse all the elements.
Fuse iron, please. Fuse lead.
Fuse carbon. Fuse sulfur.
TA M IR GR EEN BER G
291
Fuse the solitary as well. The transient.

The praised. The heavenly.
Fuse your names. Your homes.
Your money. Fuse with your hands.
Your passion. Your great power
of the imagination. Aim brilliant rays
to where lust burns. Turn
dust in your palms. Listen
to the rap of rain-drops.
For he was alive, my friend, and long before
you arrived in the world he was forgotten,
yet, even if his beautiful eyes had dried
and his dear frame consumed in dust,
the joy he wished to grant me hasnt died.
They will yet erupt in a are of emotion
those who are tuned to the ever vibrant note,
they will yet be prized those keen
on pondering the subtle,
and in them, their spirit, their wealth, their beauty,
will echo the love of life he possessed.
Son
I ask nothing
that Nature, in its grace, cant
yield, and even in that
I wish for a commonplace thing.
In my ignorance, I imagined poetry
was an end. I thought:
From the lines of the poem Ill build a house
where I could abide when my heart felt bitter.
A great loneliness was my lot
until I grew to understand
that words, as beautiful and vital
292
as they may behow could I comfort them

in sorrow, or share their joy?
How could I cradle them gently in my arms
and bury my face in their warmth?
A son! If only I was granted a son!
The miracle of an innocent gaze, his tiny palm
supported in mine. For, his sheerest eyelash
would be purer than any rhyme!
My son. Mine. A dark toddler.
A complete human, with his own reason and will.
My nest love I will devote to him!
Well sit together in the park,
listen to the hum of grasses striving to rise.
Look, Ill whisper. Here we are
and all things are beautiful and deserving.
I wont contemplate the days yet to come,
which of times perils or riches
will be his share.
I wont venture to guess which trains he will take
in which country he will nd his peace
if he will ght with the blood of his heart
for lofty principles of justice and beauty
or if hell be infected with a crude lust for possessions
if his fate will grant him true love, a home,
or if he will be killed in a war.
Ill wait until he falls asleep, put my ear
to his crib, and if it happens that from his sleep
he utters some prosaic word,
Ill then heave my chest
with the pride of a young father, boasting:
See how lovely is my offspring,
my proxy upon the earth.
Is there something ner than this bridge
that Nature has unfolded for me
to delude, if only momentarily, the void?
293
Dusk
If a moth comes through the window of my room
and sheds from its wings yellow dust on my notebook
is this a sign?
If I wake at night from a troubled sleep
and at the foot of my bed stands a dark silhouette
is it my friend?
Please, lie to me. Tell me how pretty is the rotting vine.
Tell me that the lengthening shadows at dusk are warm.
If a cold morning rises, and a dense fog enshrouds
homes, trees and people I love to watch
is there something else beyond?
If a crooked crack in the wall pulls my gaze
and the beauty of line reveals an artists skill, softness and intent,
is this a comfort?
Please, lie to me. Tell me that the foundation of the house is solid.
Tell me that beyond the oceans great lively cities wait.
Elegy
1.
In John Donnes poem about
the second anniversary
of the Progress of the Soul
I found written:
. . . think that they close thine eyes
that they confess much in the world amiss
who dare not trust a dead mans eye with that
which they from God and angels cover not.
Despite the bone-chilling cold.
Despite the fact that it is the last night of November
and Im unable to imagine a candles ame
casting quivering shadows across the white drape,
294
nor the bright mercury light of surgery.

I sit in my room and gaze ahead. With
deliberate and clear thought I focus
the white square of light on the face and wait:
I concede that my naked body is but
the total sum of thirty-one-year-old Democrituss
tiny creatures. Part of my body
evaporates as water, another transforms
into something which is meant to be but is notparticularly
during sleeping hoursand part of it forms the one
who looks fearfully into the small mirror
in the bathroom. I also concede
that soon Ill be dead. Ill be but
the imprint of my teeth on a plastic blue pen,
a scratch on the desk, the injury
I suffered in my knee when I was four
and a single recording of the persistent voice:
one two three testing
one two three testing.
And what if I weep? Over whom? In one moment
the body will convex the checkered blanket,
and laterthe featureless absence;
the one who embroiders with a ne thread of pain
the gods of physics and the bite of love
balancing vacant hours
with faceless days.
Ill fade and become nothing. I wont walk blindly
in the rooms of my lover, now
three years dead. The branches of the pine tree
wont stir and the chords of the cold air
stretching from the ridge of Mount Carmel
up into the clouds wont shudder with surprise as if rushing
to the gap left by the bodys emptiness:
Im not Linus, my love. My esh as yours
discharges sweat, and my hand touches names
only if the blade of time strikes.
2.
The pen will dry up. The book will rot
in the trash can. The kid on his bicycle
295
driving past my balcony every morning like a ghost

is a reection of the dead lover; one day hell grow
into a smiling man, imprisoned in black-and-white snapshots,
an artistic copy of longing exchanged
for silvery coins of one shekel and one hundred-dollar bills.
Blood molecules will become
molecules of asphalt, and on both winter will descend.
Rains will ood Herzl Street, will be drawn
to the post-ofce square and dry up in the air with a thin wail:
Theres no comfort in love.
No comfort in machines.
No comfort in angels.
(An angel is a biological drea(m)ry mutation
of a thirty-one-year-old man whose vain torments
grew wings and his poem turned
into a silver B.M.W. bike
to ride into the guardians arms.)
3.
(Not across the asphalt, but
in the sea. In the still, heavenly, almost
anachronistic sea, on a warm, wintry
afternoon of a Tuesday)
4.
As for the black-and-white snapshot
I concede, and even dreamed, that time is nite.
I mean, the time that is a spherical ring.
A ring that diminishes to zero at the soft touch
of a lamp-light. I also dreamed
that nite is the distance to where
a hidden beauty can drift
when the sky above the city is blind.
For a moment only the seam came undone.
For an instant the bridge spanned between
the abyss of nothing and the abyss of nothing
and atoms, as abstract as love
but immortal, hurried and gathered
from the ends of a universe forever expanding,
296
from points that even the telescope

on Mount Palomar hasnt sighted,
to become a gentle, dark body
on which my ngers played
a mute quartet on a January night. For more
than a billion years your body, broken down
to its tiny parts, roamed among cold and aloof stars
until it dared to form against the waves of chaos
into a delicate, fragile architectural structure. For another
billion years it will yet roam, doomed to innite drifting,
like that clear persistent recording
transmitted on radio waves
to empty space, granting the reciting voice
lovely lines of poetry by T. S. Eliot,
immortal life devoid of human touch.
The yellow light of stars blends with the yellow light
of the reading-lamp. Traversing together through
two memory slits the weight of the blue light
refracted from the arm will wane. How miserable
we will be on the third anniversary of the souls progress in soul:
the body is immortal
but the memory of its warmth
is transient.
5.
The pressure of wind on a billboard,
the small wet stones
on which the bare foot rests,
and the small round stones
moving in a circular motion in the inner ear:
This is the life of the everyday. Evening,
as I return from the ofce, Ill recline, weary,
on the armchair and imagine: youve written a poem.
The Twentieth Century is dying, my love, and so are we.
Ive forgotten who of the two of us, crossing Haneviim Street
every night,
stopped to investigate the exact compounds
of an aftershave scent Aqua-blue. The chemist?
The dejected lover? Certainly not the artist. The artist
297
his name is poetic, but his life is selsh and remote,

lacking the sweetness of time and place.
On a lthy shard of glass he inscribes
reections of mathematical equations
and gives them names:
Birth. Serpent. Neon. Year.
(Names whose end is sorrow, ignorance and deception.)
The Twentieth Century is dying, my love, and so are we.
New names ll the room:
The uncertainty principle. The waves function. The moments
alteration in the warm body. The alteration of the body in the
open sea.
The alteration of the open sea in its salt. In the bubbles of air
released from the mouth
of the drowned; in his wet curls; the nothing in the space-less
void threatening to ee the bounds of the household ball of light;
the nothing in the void in which a fragile ball of light oats. . .
6.
Who will remember how on the second week of February, nineteeneighty-seven, a camera ashed on your dark face, and you,
silent and somber, looked past the shoulder of the anonymous
photographer
toward some hidden point in space? In your right hand you held a
small book,
blue-green. With a magnifying glass I read the tiny letters
on its cover: The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Your open
mouth
suggested: in the middle of a word the moment had been severed
from time
to be buried in my wallet. For another year or two the word will
oat
in the space of the black-and-white snapshot (measuring
two and a half centimeters over three and a half centimeters)
and then will be tossed to the garbage with unpaid
electric bills and my notebooks. Blue-green will be the color of the
last experiment,
desperate, pathetic, to hold on to the simple harmonies
and the pre-Le-Corbusier proportions - - - - - - - 298
7.
The rst experiment:
Impulse. The innite digital line. A green screen.
A green sheet. A green face. A green angel. Beep beep.
A wave of zero amplitude. A green Michelangelo. Piet:
E
M = C
2
M = the mass of the thin lifeless body.
C2 = the square of sharp light falling on the face,
on the pallid cheekbones and on a frail shoulder.
E =the faint energy of memory, weeping,
trying to challenge the laws of nature
fastening with diminishing strength
the remnants of a green magnetic tape:
2 = 2
2 1 = 1
1 = 1
1 = 1
1 = 1
1 1 = 0
0 = 0
0
In the other experiment, based on whats written on page seven
of the blue-green booklet, perhaps comfort is hidden. In thin, pale
letters, I found:
Auyler, thirsting for love, proves the existence of a divine father
in a simple mathematical conguration:
love, weakness, sorrow and deception. And immediately after
ei + 1 = 0
all the connections are given: the crease in the page, the height of
the wave, the glow of light and its absence.
My Grandma Rachel Age Fifteen

Today my grandma Rachel turned fteen
and the saliva drooling from her mouth
is but a wondrous, diaphanous thread,
299
a path of light, a boat for inebriated angels

to sail through into her body.
And these are the names of Gods emissaries
who came to anoint her feet in oil
at her bed in the general ward
at Laniado hospital in Netanya:
The angel of the excreting sheets.
The angel of bed sores.
The angel of the breathing machine.
Whats to my grandma Anne Sextons delicate wrist?
Whats to my grandma the long curls of Arthur Rimbaud?
Im happy, says grandma in French.
Im happy. Grandma hugs the angel of the breathing machine
that emits into her lungs air puried of germs.
Soon, my shadow will strike a small
pile of snow, and then Ill turn fteen.
Sheets, says the nurse impatiently. A pile of sheets.
Marius, my love, will come to meet me near the fence
of the high-school for girls in Bucharest. Grandma laughs.
I was there already years ago.
It was before my shadow refused to freeze
on a small pile of snow, and when my love
kissed me, his sweet kiss blossomed
into my body like a rose petal,
and later, in my fathers wine cellar,
in the dim wine cellar, Marius threw me
to the oor, and when he tore my virginity
my right hand struck the tap of a barrel
and wine oozed onto the lthy oor.
Grandma weeps. The angel of the breathing machine
industriously drones a rhythmic song. In the hallway
the nurses shout. Beyond the window
I see roofs of ugly buildings
gnawing at the sun until it is no more.
300
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago
in a kingdom by a mountain shrouded in mist.
I loved there an innocent dark boy
but his beautiful name and his gentle body
were never ever made known to me.
Years ago he languished and passed away.
Two years passed since he went.
Like a birds brief and muted twitter.
Like the drop of a pine leaf
into a sweaty hand.
Under the ceiling the angels hovered
whose names were like his and like mine
and a cold wind blew from my eyes and killed Annabel Lee.
Later, the soft light in the clouds drew back,
and time, too, turned its face to the wall.
I recall a black-and-white snapshot
I wanted to steal from his desk
but never found the nerve
Poetics 1
I cant write about love.
Ill write words. Here, Ive written:
Love. I could become absorbed describing the warmth
in the pores of the skin. In all of them. The pores
in the shoulders socket. The pores in the lips.
I wont drop intoxicated onto the couch. Ill keep on writing,
but will ignore the much harder syllables, such as longing
which is but a double touch:
the one who has left a burn in the palm, and the deeper one
its echo resounding in memory. The poem is
the sanctioned lie between a crass desire for clarity
and memory. Correction:
The sanctioned lie between the blood and the imagination.
301
Poetics 2
Poetry is the tongue of the stutterers.
I mean, I think so.
For, if there were no stutterers, what would be the use
of rhythm. Clock. Ocean. Wind. Whistle.
Poetics 3
Having written so much poetry
I learn the true way of love,
in particular, all that concerns
white doors whose edges are gold, their weight ivory,
and nights their hinges groan with shameless bliss
Journey 1
I sailed north. Maybe west.
I cant remember.
Beyond the cliff boys landed on my shoulder,
intimating a gray secret. I laughed a lot.
I plunged in cool waters. Alone.
Then the carpet was thicker than ever
and a quiet breeze reveled in the curtain.
I heard terrible words.
I was made to sing coarsely.
I cried. I recalled a couple of names.
Later I awoke and a quiet breeze reveled in the curtain
Journey 2
Ive touched the asphalt but didnt pray.
I uttered words and let the wind
come in through my shirt.
302
My ngers felt a white pebble

and its touch was sweet and cold.
I rejoiced and sang: Air.
I almost remembered all the words!
Later I wished to go into town
but a boy delayed me.
His palm was warm and therefore I said nothing.
He asked that I draw his portrait
in gray watercolors. I refused
against my will and watched the sky.
I said: The song birds of the Twentieth Century
are a ock of F-16s
but he laughed in my face
and took off on a CC 750 bike
303
SHARRON HASS
(b. 1966)
Sharron Hass was born in Israel. A poet and an essayist, she holds
a BA in classics and an MA in religious studies from Tel Aviv
University. She has published three volumes of poems and has
participated in several international poetry festivals. Her awards
include the Hezy Leskly Award, the Ministry of Education and
Culture Award, and the Prime Minister Award. She teaches
literature and philosophy and lives in Tel Aviv. The poems
appearing here are from her 1997 collection The Mountain Mother
Is Gone, and from her 2001 collection, The Stranger and
the Everyday Woman.
Our Life Is the Life of Beasts

Pharaoh sails from Noh-Ammon
across a green-eyed Nile.
A dark music echoes in the chimes
of his blood. Sorrow and the tumult of parting
stir the body, like a leaf,
across the night.
Only dough and candy I put in my mouth:
food for the reckless dying.
304
304
With the same breath we consider

eeing and meeting: I become a howling
wolf and he a white bird.
Round and round I pace in the yard
within towering walls of gold and re
summer has erected. Twisted and cold
like a crocodile he goes up the river (to the outer calm?)
With time, the words ebb between us.
Were ashamed to admit we havent died.
Find it hard to admit that passion suddenly
looms, again and again robbing us of oblivion.
Only the motion of being is consistent.
Not hell. Not happiness.
Like laden vats of wine
we are lled with mistrust and longing.
Our life is the life of beasts.
A bare and desperate life
of failed love.
Now only the singular gathers strength.
Now weariness, too, is drunkenness: the ease
with which the thread leaps from the hand, memory from pain.
To the Fox
Very still under leaves, under shut eyes,
I tremble.
You light a re around me, and Im cold. Your arms
pin me to the ground. A hardy, twining vine
wraps around us. I dont breathe. Grapes upon grapes my body
scatters on black soil.
SHA R RON HA SS
305
It is not me you touch. Not into me you enter.

Into the fox in me. A wild beast and a night of no
features.
A terrible softness. Depths that yield no reection
close on me.
In the absolute parting of a day
or two, spans the white stillness of plains
like prey, the open vastness numbs me.
In it, I burn motionless.
My life becomes dear to me:
it belongs to the distant hunter
and his limpid eye.
And then, along the body travels
the memory of lovea low voice, sweet . . .
I know already, the voice that bid
the sun, the grasses, the blood to rise,
wont allow me to run
The Stranger
Summer, the stranger stands at the gate.
Behind him stretch the dark robes of the sea
and the scent of salt and damp wood
emanates from his esh. His depths call out
to mine and seagulls shriek. The homeless
wind churns and from my body drop
black fruit and the ash of love.
He summons my great nakedness to cross
his vastness, a hollow ship on blue
lips not betraying the rage
or despair of the drowned.
Destitute as I am he takes me and, out of ignorance
306
bred of forgetfulness, I strain to speak the tongue

of the deep. The tongue of that which glows in the dark.
Beneath the hunger clouding my mind I hear
how the sh convulse with laughter
in his handsIm about to die in the brightest
season when the light reveals
and murders desire.
He drives a sea through my hair and exposes
my arms graying with lust
and shame. Across the great waters
the light deciphers my fervent wish for speech
my horror of silence.
Round and still the glaring light
of the sultry season reveals how the salt of pirates
produces black honey in his body
and gnaws mine around the bones.
My dear brother, lust gently held my face
as I listened to time rise over the deck
ooding the bed with cold despair.
My dear brother, Im afraid to utter
your entire name.
On the beach, at the top of a tower,
a golden bellfor hundreds of years no one
strikes the gentle chill.
The tree-people extend green hands
mumbling in myriad tongues
of light and I wish to forget
a gray pond
a deep impenetrable thought buried
under its skin where time
leaves no marks.
The sound of harried steps echoes
between the city wallsa war is declared
between you and me.
SHA R RON HA SS
307
Ducks coated with thin wax

dont ee the blades of frost
and the aroma of hot coffee engenders hope
in us, we of the sheerest wings,
of the shortest memory.
In your great nakedness you refuse
to approach, your eyes smooth
with white ash of love. Beyond dark
drapes the face of day is attened.
The eternity of the present is not more not less
than the awareness of destruction and laughter
that holds us at the edge
of a chilling abyss of passion.
Beyond the fog of alcohol
we quiver warmth near
warmth, like lost ships
every steady light confounds us,
simulating a home: the whims of kinship
of black blood.
Dear brother, are you not my dear
brother? In the puzzle of estrangement
your eyes two beads of lightwhose
face is it above me, beside me,
a tiger, a star, or a ower?
The sob whipping in the body is everything
and nothingand time undoes
the heart into resignation
into surrendering the name.
Tomorrow, in the light, on the street, every boy,
brother, is you. And I? I want
to embrace anyone who could
cast a shadow inside, breathe the wind.
To seize the sun that time imperviously navigates
from the land of the living to the dead
to seize by the hand the great re
308
through which your face is smiling

no longer visible
The Great Illusion

The angel opens his eye, doubled
like a crocodiles, his stare, a frozen crystal,
stirs the broad back of summer: there will be no escape.
No mystery.
Salt burns the shermens palms
and the sh frolic at length below
before deep dark ngers
haul them, soundlessly,
to a shore of stone and forgetfulness.
Scarce. Black bitter honey
and the scent of cold fruit under
the white lids of the angel of time
under the blades of his gaze
despair grips the throat: in another land,
more distant than any bottom, the stranger
weve lost throws back his head
inhales the fragrant blue robes
of the heavenly choir.
Strings of stars stretch across
the time gap between continents:
he has no longing for another place.
The Flutist
Im embarrassed to say it
if you dont call, Ill die. Im
embarrassed to say what is true
and untrue. That which doesnt move mountains.
I dont move myself anywhere. Some
fool sits down to play the ute at the edge
SHA R RON HA SS
309
of the roofI fall asleep.

You dont call. No one dies. Except for
Mr. Present.
I Stand in the Circle and Look Around Me53

Garlands of owers are laid on the bed.
A white and yellow profusion conceals the horror of the sick.
A total refutation of love, Ophelia
nds harmony among yellow weeds and orchids.
When desire breaks down to despair
the body is allowed any interpretation.
Under the frigid skin of the sheet
I understand this perfectly.
Wealth rages in waste, too hard
to bear. Perhaps owers will shut their lopped off
mouths, desist from their unremitting wish
to burn in one contained beauty.
I understand this perfectly.
One must silence a thousand tongues
in the body (mine?) that was your bodyodd . . .
Before my dazed eyes my clothes burn
without a sound, and inside the buds of re
destruction mocks a brief, embittered beauty.
I understand this perfectly
and sink below the rivers frigid skin
to pick yellow
and white owers of oblivion.
53. From a popular childrens song.
310
Afternoon Slumber
An afternoon slumber takes us
to the ferry, children eeing
the giants of heat and boredom
to a blue shore at whose edge
walk the dead. In their faces moving like cats
they ask what we left behind
did someone already betray us.
Choking with longing we turn bold
try to grab their hand, have them bend into us
and see how tall is the love of their withdrawal.
They slink, sly as the shadow that from a distance
takes the shape of water,
and turn to dust in the face of our craving
A wave hurls us back to wakefulness. Pale and poor
we know that someone has fed us from his palm
not having seen his face not having satised our hunger
Smooth Boys
The smooth boys that would cross our lives
with their song, hadnt been made yet. The earth
hadnt pulled them out of her like slender rain daffodils.
All night we stood on the terrace observing the hill
our faces open like the jaws of stony lions
to hail the instant when matter is transformed
to deliver us from ancient lords.
We fell asleep.
While still trusting ourselves the changes came
leaving no trace on the dew-glinting pavements
wresting our nicknames
pouring wild monkey blood into us.
In the morning, dim and arrogant, we yanked
the rain daffodils, a moment before the singing faces
SHA R RON HA SS
311
split open within them.

A moment before the wondrous stranger
would change our lives.
The Suns Mooring

From here, the port of the end-of-seas, only the sun
knows the way out. But the sun doesnt stir.
Anchored in water
it is a heavy light
waiting.
In the village of the dead theres no lane
and you dont know
in which bed you will lie during the day
the night of the living.
You meet your lover by chance. You let go of him
fast. Passion here has no memory,
no anticipation.
Going round and round water
propels you to stagger into a bed
where you dont recognize the face
sleeping beside you.
In the retreating light you awake.
At the edge of water you briey weigh
whether to follow the face
that watched you, pale
oblivion singes eye-lashes, lids, brows.
How to stretch a sail of might?
Elicit sound from a sleeping face?
Here the seer is unseen
with an eye perpetually agape
312
the world dives in reverse

like a soundless stone.
The Girl Fumbles

The girl fumbles along dark walls
the mother lingers above the open well.
The dogs ears quiverwhere theres no light
the distance grows, the voices ee.
The master of the dead simulates love, shows
the girl red fruit. As if from the bottom
of a murky river, a swarm of sh soars and shines.
The girl tastes a red transparency
containing a dark, salty ring.
The mother settles upon the elds like wind.
The master delivers the girl to the light. Behind her back he smiles:
the spells of patterns in the dark are etched
deeper than pain.
Sweetness rages within approaching sounds.
In the line of light the girl lingers
the threshold splits her.
Beyond the Forest

Beyond the forest the woman I left
waits. I havent touched her body
as I touched the men in whose bodies I slept.
I drove a black eye through her soft hair,
and the careless lipstick, smeared like ice cream
across her lips, was the aw
which promised warmth and hunger.
I didnt touch her
but gave her the eye
SHA R RON HA SS
313
and she chased after me delirious with hope

to duplicate herself. The sweep of her loneliness
began to burna star disengaging
from its frozen, protective orbit.
She chased after me
to let the words that drop from my mouth
ll her lap
with sweets
to convert me into vassals
to break me into kingdoms, summer homes,
to make me the beheaded chicken
shell tie around her waist while cooking
314
AFTERWORD: The Poems of Irit Katzir

In 1999, Professor Ephraim Katzir asked me to translate a selection of
poems by his late daughter, Irit Katzir (19531995). He sent me her
four books (Poems, 1993, Threads of Light, 1994, Sea Shell, 1995, and
True Life, 1996), I read them and was captivated by Katzirs distinct
voice. Included here are a few of her poems.
Sylvia, Sylvia
for Sylvia Plath
Sylvia, Sylvia,
people raise a brow.
Sylvia, why?
And I who came
from the other side
of the world,
who was suckled
by a barren moon
and ever since
became a gypsy of love,
I do understand.
There are voids
that even a husband and kids,
poems, and all the prizes
cannot ll.
315
Youd be surprised
how well I understand.
In the meantime I grow
a black lily.
In the Darkness
In the darkness of my door
a knock on my heart.
Outside, a poem.
Naked and trembling
sad and alone.
I invited him in
to be his mom.
And so, many days have passed,
my poem and I were good to one another.
The poem grew like a palm tree.
His face lit up like a wild ower.
And I knew at once
the time had come.
My Fancy Is an Island
My fancy is an island.
When an abyss opens at my feet,
when the wind in its fury slams doors,
I sail to my island.
There I meet my sister
who years before went to be
with angels.
Were both barefoot,
laughing, telling
316
each other secrets,

follow our whim.
I rhyme poems for her,
she ower-braids my hair.
My fancy is an island,
and Im as pretty
as a nymph.
All love poems
were written for me,
and all men
succumbed to my charms.
In my fancy,
my hair is golden,
the sky clear of clouds.
In my fancy
theres no room for worry,
no one was ever scolded
and no one ever shed a tear.
In my fancy
you touch my shoulder
one soft gesture
my body a poem.
Hell and Back

I was in hell and back
I loved a man
I loved a woman
but now the time has come.
Forgive me for not
having learned the rules.
A FT ERWOR D
317
I was born without

protective skin
and the hearts of men
are made of steel.
And you child
so near
so far.
Accept me with love
like a mother.
Im so scared.
If I Were a Poet
If I were a poet
like Baudelaire
to describe your beauty.
But Ill just say this:
Your lips a love potion.
More than once you
insulted me, embarrassed me
in front of strangers,
but how beautiful you were
in my eyes, a feral, royal mare.
Ive heard the musings of sages
but your ckleness pleased me
seventy times over.
Today in the store
I saw a owery dress
it would have suited you
immeasurably
I dream you.
318
Lets begin child

from the beginning.
Lets play back
the lm, erase the hurt,
the mad result of a moment.
But in vain.
What is the power of love
if I cant rouse you from sleep
with a kiss
as they do in fairy tales.
Do You Know
Do you know who I am.
That I was once
a beautiful girl.
That I had a love
yellow like the moon.
Do you know who it is
I think about before sleep.
What is the most beautiful
thing I ever saw.
And what is the last thought
that will ash in my mind.
Do you know who I am.
And who are you.
*
Yes, it is true,
my poems repeat themselves.
A FT ERWOR D
319
Innumerable times
to utter the perfect moment.
In fact, the only one
existing with abandon,
pain, madness, but
why get involved.
Any garment will only
reduce. Better just
with the purity of her body.
To mold love
with silence.
Captive of the Image

Captive of her own
image not knowing
what is real
what is reection.
A damsel in distress
still waiting for the knight
to come and rescue her
from the chains
the longing
the blade
the animals in the forest.
Yes, there are
sophisticated computers
light planes
and conditioned people.
But in the twentieth century
there are no princes.
And as for the damsel
only she perhaps is able
to revive herself.
320
I Saw You
I saw you as an island child
resting on the warm sand
the shells in your palm
invaluable gems.
You and the sun
like two mirrors
reect one another.
I saw you like a femme fatale
satin and pearls
myrrh and resin.
The softness of your lips
the light in your eyes
yet your heart so dark
like a tigress you tear
the hearts of your lovers.
So why your lips
all at once
are bereft of kisses,
your face, the object of dreams,
so white.
Why is it that your body
destined for pleasure
is frozen forever.
I Bemoan
I bemoan the velvet
of your lips, the pearl
between your thighs.
All the treasures
I could never possess.
A FT ERWOR D
321
Now in mists
not mine
not others
and yet youre in the bud,
the stem, the shade, the light,
in the sweetness of the moon,
the pulse of the earth,
elusive and palpable,
beautiful and maddening.
Therefore in secret
I name you
my love.
*
Only what I have lostis mine forever.
Rachel
For who is to say
what is real
what is dream.
Since youve gone
day after day
I recreate you
in the regions
of the imagination.
Finally succeed to grasp
the violence the softness
the vagaries of your heart
the gold of your laugh
in the cage of my heart
to accompany me
till I die
Why Did You Come

Why did you come
to take me
322
from the clouds

and Ive already
given up on
communing with people.
Why softly
while Im determined
to die.
Why ood with light
my dark heart.
I who said that all are deceitful
why now a lovers benefaction.
Is it good or bad.
Am I brave.
Deserving.
Like a newborn
I must learn
everything from the beginning.
Ailing But Not Ill

Ailing but not ill in her grand bed
my mothera proud queen.
Maids tiptoe around her to ll her wishes.
A red revolutionary in a world without a Tzar
a ame of re in alien space.
You opened your arms to embrace all,
they bound you with borders, replies.
We needed you as a completing puzzle piece
to realize our delusion.
But youwho noticed invisible colors
scorned the pretense
wanted the truth behind the scenes.
Dauntless you fought for innocence
defended the dream
A FT ERWOR D
323
refused payoffs
resignations
substitutions
for you wished for the sun
you wished for the stars
therefore you kept quiet
you vowed silence.
Days, hiding in your bed,
building from the inside secret worlds.
Rooms within rooms within rooms
and yet I dont understand.
I call to you now beyond the years
to break the silence.
Is it the kisses of froth
the nights of sadness?
Poetry becoming routine?
Is it because it is not
like in the movies
with a tough, and yet gentle,
Humphrey Bogart?
You my mother who was a poet not of words
I would like just once to know and understand
if I who waver between and between
could have found comfort in your arms.
I Wanted
1.
I wanted to make you like a poem
to wear your robes
sleep in your bed
laugh with your voice
so I could suck your fragrance
from its body
divert myself with your fancy.
324
2.
How to draw the sea
changing mood and form
endlessly in one day?
How to freeze a bird
in its ightwith a love song?
3.
The treasures you granted with such ease
the nerve to be outlandish guileless insane
the wound you chiseled in the wall of indifference
all slink away from between the lines of my poems.
In my bed I enumerate your merits
like prayer-beads without the thread
shadows of no image.
When You Spread Your Hands

When you spread your hands
you let go of your life like a spoiled girl
leaving behind a doll she no longer likes.
When you spread your hands
you knew you were not a bird.
My love, you went.
A good old world remained which you wrapped
as a gift for me.
Tired sensations were revived with dew
the shadow recovered its shades
to the echo of its sounds.
If its impossible to weep
perhaps only the poems meant to stroke pain
will be able to embellish your ripped body
for the soul
the soul reveals
what the heart conceals.
A FT ERWOR D
325
*
Winter, when the man of light left,
I stumbled along corridors,
knocked on all doors,
trying to silence loud desires,
knowing there are no answers.
Even when they told me nice and wise things
about impossible expectations,
about necessary resignations,
absence was reected in every leaf,
in every vision, in the walls.
When the man of light left me
he took with him all the keys.
Every Sleep
Every sleep is a dress rehearsal
for the great sleep.
Every parting is preparation for the great parting.
But, in fact, when I think about this,
I dont need rehearsals.
Even he who knows not how to live,
knows, like all else, how to die.
326
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

TSIPI KELLER holds a graduate degree in English from New York University. Her translations have appeared in reviews and anthologies in the
United States, Europe, and Israel. Her translation of Dan Pagiss posthumous
collection Last Poems was published by The Quarterly Review of Literature
(1993), and her translation of Irit Katzirs posthumous collection And I Wrote
Poems was published by Carmel (2000). Her novels The Prophet of Tenth Street
(1995) and Leverage (1997) were translated into Hebrew and published by
Sifriat Poalim. Her novels Jackpot (2004) and Retelling (2006) were published
by Spuyten Duyvil. Among her awards are a National Endowment for the
Arts Translation Fellowship, an Armand G. Erpf award from the Translation
Center at Columbia University, and a NYFA award in ction. Forthcoming
from BOA Editions is her translation of Maya Bejeranos The Hymns of Job
and Other Poems.
AMINADAV DYKMAN, a translator and critic, studied at the University of
Geneva, where he worked with George Steiner, and at Tel Aviv University. His
books of translation (into Hebrew) include The Chant of Stars, an anthology
of French Renaissance poetry (1996), First and Last Poems by Joseph Brodsky
(1997), and The Shield of Achilles and Other Poems by W. H. Auden (1998). He
also edited with George Steiner Homer in English (Penguin, 1996). His latest
book, My Generation, My Beast: Russian Poetry of the 20th Century, was published by Schocken Tel Aviv (2003). He has taught at Penn State University
and now teaches at Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
327
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES

A Beetles Life, 94
A Belated Poem, 32
A black beetle slowly makes her
way . . . , 94
A bus cuts through the illumined
darkness . . . , 201
A calm sea. The end of
September . . . , 18
A candle in the room . . . , 232
A chameleon crossing the road . . . ,
229
A charred eld . . . , 231
A Childish Farewell Song to a
Prime Minister, 141
A Concealed Passenger, 177
A Cradle Story, 58
A dark backyard . . . , 231
A Different Sensation, 105
A Galilean Landscape, Important to
Note, 251
A Hand Empty of Body, 273
A heavy light oods drowns the
room, soft . . . , 237
A Linguistic Problem, 28
A man goes out to the dark . . . ,
239
A man sits on the ground . . . , 61
A Mother Goes About, 88
A mother goes about with a dead
child in her belly . . . , 88
A Moving Electric Message, 132
A Naive Painting, 130

A neighbor, her face creased with
lines . . . , 195
A Note, 236
A Pint of Beer, 277
A Pound of Child, 264
A Private History, 94
A rectangle that is a doorframe in a
hotel room . . . , 251
A Recurring Memory, 104
A Small Error in the Machine, 41
A smelly Mediterranean city . . . , 84
A Soldier in the Desert. A
Romance in Photos, 257
A Sour Pickle the Angel of Death,
60
A Stranger, 47
A stranger was smiling . . . , 47
A Time for Everything, 12
A Very Cheerful Girl, 113
A winter-haunted sky . . . , 98
A Woman Who Practices How to
Live, 53
A world is created in the shape . . . ,
130
Abused Neighbor, 195
Additional Dimensions, 152
Afternoon Nap, 211
Afternoon Slumber, 311
Again the husband bones the
wife . . . , 220
329
Ailing But Not Ill, 323

Ailing but not ill in her grand
bed . . . , 323
All At Once Everything Seems
Dear, 164
All have already gone to the
mountain, waiting . . . , 267
All that I saw were but itting
shadows . . . , 185
All the Trees, 156
Almost Flowers, 197
Already Night, Already Day, 116
An acquaintanceship that began in
mid-winter . . . , 85
An afternoon slumber takes us . . . ,
311
An Attempt to Express an Opinion,
80
An Exceptional Autumn, 79
An Explosion in Jerusalem, 18
And each beast had a white garden
of its own . . . , 118
And I wanted to tell Batya this . . . ,
109
And so, quietly . . . , 122
And the last shot . . . , 139
And the Whiteness Grew Stark, 175
And Then We Had, 43
And then we had a quiet evening
and we were quiet . . . , 43
And Tomorrow I Too to Die Like
This, 64
And Until When, 9
And you said that my
boundaries . . . , 271
Anecdote, 29
Annabel Lee, 301
Antiques, 143
Apple the Cucumber and the Plum,
The, 224
Arithmetic, 204
As Agreed, 36
330
As
As
As
As
I lock the car door . . . , 199

I say . . . , 113
I sit before you . . . , 126
if you could draw a line and
say: Below it, poverty . . . , 260
As the heat reaches the innards . . . ,
230
As usual, as in the beginning, it all
began with water . . . , 97
At the airport a man . . . , 53
At the collection depot for orphans
they weigh pounds of life . . . ,
264
At the edge of the paper the
pen . . . , 31
At the end of Independence Day
1972 . . . , 132
At the rst moment . . . , 246
At the same time we arrived under
the three trees . . . , 273
Aunt Miriam and Uncle Yerocham
loved . . . , 51
Australian Story, 63
Autumn. A French Movie, 261
Autumn is a French invention . . . ,
261
Baby Blues, 122
Back then she was like a binging
preying beast . . . , 111
Baking, 230
Barks rise from the valley . . . , 233
Because I loved you so much I
couldnt tell you . . . , 74
Beyond the Forest, 313
Beyond the forest the woman I
left . . . , 313
Bible in Pictures II, The, 136
Blue Prince, 198
Blue prince, mine, in a robe . . . ,
198
Blues in a Jar, 177
I ND E X O F TI TLE S AND FIR ST L IN ES
Blues on the Life That Was Almost

Mine, 264
Boundaries, 271
Breaks, 146
Brown deposits in the coffee
cup . . . , 153
Browsing through the Album, 30
Burning Holy Books, 137
But one day a great Bible
sailed . . . , 136
But She Had a Son, 85
Candle, 232
Captive of the Image, 320
Captive of her own . . . , 320
Cat, The, 83
Chances, 145
Cheese, 135
Chess at the Seashore, 18
Combination, The, 144
Come to Me Like a Capitalist, 158
Come to Me Like a Jew, 163
Comrade Poet, 40
Conceit, 47
Conceited and shortsighted people
have restored . . . , 141
Condolences, 132
Confession: Gentle, 42
Convincing Herself Shes a Picture,
125
Cracking the bones of her turreted
crooked neck . . . , 268
Dance Music, 75
Data Processing #10, 245
Day and night this shrieking in the
ears . . . , 28
December. An arctic wind, new . . . ,
25
Departure from the Garden of

Eden, The, 146
Destined for greatness, hes sprawled
on his belly . . . , 30
Diagnosis, 28
Dog After Dog, 255
Dolinger, 191
Dont Stop the Motion, 249
Do You Know, 319
Do you know who I am . . . , 319
Dove, 51
Dry thorns . . . , 49
During the breaks between burning
and burning in hell . . . , 146
Dusk, 294
Dust Instead of Glory, 61
Each child emerged, a bag of fruit
in its hand . . . , 269
Eats . . . , 52
Ecclesiastes, 50
Eight Short Ones, 229
Ein Leben, 25
Elegy, 294
Elegy for a Friend Who Lost Her
Mind, 176
End of Winter, The, 26
Entropy, 145
Estate, 216
Even in sleep, you ll the
rooms . . . , 11
Even now as she is locked . . . , 210
Even though the labia, usually . . . ,
187
Every Sleep, 326
Every sleep is a dress rehearsal . . . ,
326
Experiments in Hysterics, 77
Explicitly Named, 267
Fairuz lifts her lips . . . , 260
Father, 47
IN DEX OF T IT L ES A N D FIR ST L IN ES
331
Fear, 269
February twelfth nineteen ninety
two . . . , 64
Fence, 104
Find myself in Caf Marsand . . . ,
177
Fire, 231
Flower of Anarchy, The, 140
Flutist, The, 309
For a long winter I watched . . . ,
104
For Ruth, 118
For they are at the center of my
life . . . , 120
For who is to say . . . , 322
For whom was intended the new
sign . . . , 190
Forget me . . . , 76
Forgive my outburst, Sir . . . , 122
Fowl of the Air, The, 139
Fragments, 96
Friendly Dragon, 185
From a Distance the Tombstones
Look Like a Flock of Storks, 258
From here, the port of the end-ofseas, only the sun . . . , 312
From the dark room in my
brain . . . , 105
From the Depth I Called Hey, 214
From the Diary of a Divorc, 21
From the White Dictionary, 277
Garlands of owers are laid on the
bed . . . , 310
German Boot, 178
Girl Fumbles, The, 313
Goat, 50
Go, Go Wherever You Go, But Go,
115
Goodbye Berlin, 41
Gouging, 239
Grand Days Have Gone By Her, 86
332
Grave in the Sun, 57

Great Illusion, The, 309
Greek Music, 256
Greenness of Leaves, The, 93
Hair of Night, 170
Handcuffs. Street Poem, 259
Hands of Autumn, The, 250
Having written so much poetry . . . ,
302
Hayuta, 39
Hayuta remembers better days . . . ,
39
He forgot to play . . . , 227
He went . . . , 175
Hell and Back, 317
Hello Berlin, said the wooden
leg . . . , 41
Here . . . , 211
Here Everything, 118
History of My Heart, The, 95
Hogs in the muddy . . . , 99
Holy books, my friend said in
anger . . . , 137
Holy Ground, 190
Hot in the Corner Caf, 203
Hot in the corner caf in
Trastevera . . . , 203
Hottentot Venus (Porno 7), The, 188
House Said the House, 157
Houses, 31
Housing, 69
How deep pain breaks . . . , 129
How did it go... 86
How foolish you are . . . , 47
I almost brought owers, you
said . . . , 197
I ask nothing . . . , 292
I Bemoan, 321
I bemoan the velvet . . . , 321
I bought a Turkish perfume . . . , 38
I can hold in my belly all . . . , 174

I cant write about love . . . , 301
I could have cut the veins in my
wrist . . . , 145
I Drew My End Near, 173
Ill leave you in writing this version
in Hebrew . . . , 236
Ill tell you the truth . . . , 83
I leave, taking with me . . . , 199
Im embarrassed to say it . . . , 309
Im no good at arithmetic . . . , 204
I remember a short speech . . . , 209
I sailed north. Maybe west . . . , 302
I Saw You, 321
I saw you as an island child . . . , 321
I Stand in the Circle and Look
Around Me, 310
Ive touched the asphalt, but didnt
pray . . . , 302
I Wanted, 324
I wanted to make you like a
poem . . . , 324
I was a little reckless . . . , 172
I was born in Virginia. From my
adoptive father, a judge . . . , 264
I was born to be gentle . . . , 42
I was in hell and back . . . , 317
I Was Not One of the Six Million, 1
I went past the cemetery where my
parents are buried . . . , 5
I who was present down to the
airy triangles between my
ngers . . . , 214
I Wont Travel This Summer, 193
I worked hard. I planted a bush . . . ,
63
I wrote greetings for a friends
wedding . . . , 36
Ido said to me: Men work
outside . . . , 83
If a moth comes through the
window of my room . . . , 294
If
If
If
If
I Were a Poet, 318

It So Pleases, 10
things were tailored . . . , 49
we compared this century to a
Ferris wheel . . . , 142
Imagine, Carving the Sky, 109
Immortal, 282
In a desolate hour I smell
something burning behind my
back . . . , 245
In a gesture of argument . . . , 228
In a night wailing winter . . . , 104
In a temporary shelter . . . , 226
In an incidental train, at night, at
Long-Island Intersection . . . , 29
In Answer to a Question: When
Did Your Peace Begin, 264
In Her Bed, 212
In John Donnes poem about . . . ,
294
In Memory of Dan Pagis
(1930-1986), 13
In my alcohol-stream blood ows as
well . . . , 257
In my garden I saw jasmine
blossoms swept . . . , 4
In the Darkness, 316
In the darkness of my door . . . , 316
In the Garden of Independence . . . ,
18
In the house . . . , 218
In the hour between wolf and dog the
sacred cow of hardship . . . , 213
In the month of her death she
stands . . . , 25
In the school of weeping . . . , 261
In the Soft Curve, 200
In the very early morning . . . , 212
In This Split Second, 48
In Time, 144
In time, when the sign is given,
you will nd . . . , 144
333
In what chains they had brought

her to Paris . . . , 188
Incident, 71
Interim Summation, 72
Interior Plain, The, 211
Irritating Manner in Which I Exist
in Your Fancy, The, 214
is a complicated matter. Only one
bird . . . , 33
It is the year nineteen-ninety . . . , 93
It never began, you know, the sea
was like the sea, the waves . . . ,
277
Its time to enter . . . , 271
It Seems Miraculous to Her, 210
It was far, as usual, a few drops that
night . . . , 32
It was many and many a year
ago . . . , 301
Jasmine. A Poem on Sandpaper, 260
Jerusalem, Bus #18, 1986, 147
Jerusalem, the holy city, is cold in
winter . . . , 178
Jewish Time Bomb, The, 7
Johnny, 258
Journey 1, 302
Journey 2, 302
Just as I sit with complementary
nipples . . . , 217
Just when we believed He was
generous to us . . . , 270
Last-Last, 77
Later is too late . . . , 132
Layered in owers on
bedclothes . . . , 248
Let there be in the house a
troop . . . , 48
Lets Make a Little Philosophy, 164
Letter, 150
Lie, 47
334
Lightly, 128
Lightly, like painted sh . . . , 128
Like a Binging Preying Beast, 112
Like a Bird Tagged, 212
Like a bird tagged on the foot . . . ,
212
Like a buoy your breath was
left . . . , 237
Like Back Then, When I Was
Escorted, 111
Like in the Passing Year, 111
Like light I travel . . . , 95
Like you . . . , 101
Lions Milk, 263
Lonely Womans Monologue, 17
Look, as we promised each
other . . . , 36
Lost in the Alleys of the Flat, 153
Lost Uncles, The, 139
Love Song, 205
Lullaby, 89
Lust, 248
Lying Upon the Water, 84
Marked Ship, The, 124
Matter, where do we go . . . , 234
Meantime, 35
Meantime, in my dream, she returns
to me . . . , 35
Memorial Night, 27
Metamorphosis, 152
Midas of Sugar, 224
Monologue in the Twilight of His
Life, 16
Monologue of the Deserted (II), 13
Monologue of the Witch
Impregnated by the Devil, 174
Moonstruck, 51
More than anything I hated
death . . . , 290
Morning, 153
Morning and She Pees, 215
Morning in a Foreign Place, 56

Mornings, 101
Mortication of the Soul, 19
Most of the time I doze . . . , 154
Mouth, The, 20
Move away from this blue . . . , 56
Mud, 99
Music of the Cosmos, The, 103
My bulging cat . . . , 211
My desk kept shrinking until
the tiles underneath were
exposed . . . , 21
My Fancy Is an Island, 316
My father passed away . . . , 60
My grandfather was born in the
lands of arrack . . . , 263
My Grandma Rachel Age Fifteen,
299
My grandmother forbade leaving
rice on the plate . . . , 265
My mother is a hooker without a
dagger . . . , 116
My nails grow deep into my esh,
into death . . . , 40
My Parents Motel, 5
My Wisdom, 134
Narrators Death, The, 240
New York: First Swim, 97
New York: Second Swim, 97
Nights, 100
Nights, 126
Nights hed get drunk . . . , 81
Nights when she goes out
alone . . . , 109
Nightwatch, 11
Nine words I said to you . . . , 94
19th Century: Nohant, June 76,
The, 138
No, no, they were denitely . . . , 29
No peacocks will strut in my
yard . . . , 216
No Trail Markers, 279

No trail markers. Mother will never
come back . . . , 279
Nocturnal I, 218
Nocturnal II, 220
Noon: a man in acrid clothing . . . ,
57
Not a Poem, 141
Now its better . . . , 177
Now that her face is clean and
pricked like a sieve . . . , 244
Now that theory has split from
physical reality . . . , 152
Nuns, 206
Ode, 290
Odors, 106
Of course all that youve written/
thought/ wanted to say . . . , 150
Omens, 82
On Life and on Death, 81
On my desk stands a stone the
word amen engraved in it . . . , 7
On Rain, 46
On that memorial night for whatshis-name . . . , 27
On the day you were born the
workers of joy . . . , 263
On the Eve of the Holiday, 268
On the roof of the house . . . , 100
On the wall in the caf near the
Maabara . . . , 264
One measures his trembling with a
shaky hand . . . , 76
Only in Hebrew, 134
Only in Hebrew beautiful . . . , 134
Our goat was going to die . . . , 50
Our Life Is the Life of Beasts, 304
Painting, 201
Passion-Dress, 249
335
Paupers Talk, 63
Pecan Leaves, 252
People who smoke calm me . . . ,
205
Personal Problems, 74
Pharaoh sails from NohAmmon . . . , 304
Photograph, 105
Piet, 272
Play in the Kitchen, 227
Poem, 282
Poem to a Girl Already Born, 263
Poetics 1, 301
Poetics 2, 302
Poetics 3, 302
Poetry, 238
Poetry, 244
Poetry is the tongue of
stutterers . . . , 302
Poetry will steer me to another
recollection . . . , 105
Porno 2, 187
Porno 3, 188
Poverty Line, 260
Power of Attorney, 73
Precision of Pain, The, 4
Preparations for your death
began . . . , 240
Quiet and an evening breeze . . . ,
200
Rain on the square . . . , 80
Ready Alert, 83
Reckless Love, 172
Red stains on the palm of the right
hand . . . , 273
Requiem to a Dog in the Rain, 98
Revelation, 212
Rice Paradise, 265
Rina Slavin, 91
336
Rina Slavin lies in bed all day . . . ,

91
Rings of blossoms opened orange
brown and red . . . , 249
Room Number Forty, 205
Run . . . , 247
Sabbath Prayer, 48
Sacred Cow of Hardship, The, 213
Safe Distance, 76
Scent of Wind, The, 201
Seed sown in sand awaits the rain
for years . . . , 282
Self-Portrait at Night, 34
Shame, 53
Shaheeda, 221
She coiled with pain . . . , 138
She waits for me . . . , 106
Sights, 99
Silent Film, 150
Silhouette, 237
Sits on the balcony reading a crime
book . . . , 224
Sitting in the eld watching . . . ,
223
Sitting in the Wall, 174
Sleep with Me Like a Journalist,
161
Sleeping in Another Place, 237
Slowly slowly I see it vividly . . . ,
79
Smooth Boys, 311
So Overbearing Had Become, 208
So overbearing had become the
bodys crust . . . , 208
Solo, 257
Solomons Egyptian . . . , 12
Someone tried to scrub the stain
off the wall . . . , 68
Somewhat warm in the bus, an
overcast day . . . , 147
Son, 292
Song of the Valley, 233
Spider of Sin, The, 46
Squash Watchman, The, 223
Stain Remained on the Wall, The,
68
Stairwell, 225
Stone, 129
Stranger, The, 306
Such homely nuns I saw . . . , 206
Suddenly - at his age . . . , 58
Summer, 49
Summer, the stranger stands at the
gate . . . , 306
Suns Mooring, The, 312
Sweat, 239
Sylvia, Sylvia, 315
Synopsis, 281
Tale About the Arab Who Died in
the Fire, The, 88
Talking to you is like walking on
eggshells, you said . . . , 150
Tear Comptroller Report, 261
Tempt the Devil, 24
Testimony, 29
That Made Me Woman, 45
The anarchic ower gave off a
wonderful fragrance . . . , 140
The angel opens his eye,
doubled . . . , 309
The bulldozer turned up a
gleaming marble hand . . . , 143
The combination to the safe . . . ,
144
The dead died in summer and the
poem . . . , 238
The deluding seducing warmth of
autumn . . . , 250
The departure from the Garden of
Eden was swifter . . . , 146
The ying machines of nature can

be launched with brandy, too . . . ,
256
The frog originated in a movie . . . ,
196
The fruit is done. Now it has . . . ,
224
The future, Dan said on the
telephone, about two weeks after
surgery . . . , 13
The gentle demons that followed
me . . . , 152
The girl fumbles along dark
walls . . . , 313
The greater the bondthe greater
the distance . . . , 10
The houses shook as if chilled.
Facing them . . . , 71
The key to room number forty . . . ,
205
The letter from her beau didnt
spray eau-de-cologne on her
face . . . , 257
The light above my door
proclaims . . . , 17
The light in the room grew bleak . . . ,
112
The maiden we call Hebrew . . . , 28
The moon doesnt t here . . . , 202
The mouth that enthralled . . . , 20
The news of Johnny Weissmullers
death was broadcast . . . , 258
The paper dinghy was tossed into
the puddle . . . , 139
The pecan leaves were just . . . , 252
The people we wanted, wanted
badly . . . , 225
The perfect murder has no cause,
he said . . . , 277
The point of lucidity oats like a
feather . . . , 111
337
The rain reveals the hidden names

of leaves . . . , 121
The skull is reected in the
window pane . . . , 34
The smooth boys that would cross
our lives . . . , 311
The sons of Doctor Mengele sell
tractors . . . , 262
The sparrow that collected a piece
of cellophane . . . , 196
The sun every day like a
groom . . . , 50
The wagon of Johann the
neighbor . . . , 99
The wall has a mouse the mouse
has ears . . . , 174
The war is the extension of the
policy . . . , 131
The whole of my wisdom contracts
to the bulk . . . , 134
The wind that blew in our
region . . . , 145
The window travels the clouds
travel I . . . , 169
The winter outlasted the priest . . . ,
103
The wondrous wilting of a
ower . . . , 232
There are people whove got
nothing to lose, there are
people . . . , 77
There was a moment when she
held me on her knees . . . , 272
There was a scar across his
thigh . . . , 188
They Assault Me the Flowers, 199
Theyll sing to you . . . , 89
They put handcuffs on his hands
because theres no love . . . , 259
They say it is good to be . . . , 45
Theyve always waited for just this
moment. Since then . . . , 77
338
Theyve plucked the feathers off the

goose . . . , 124
Thirty Seconds to Charge the
Nipple, 262
This Evening, 49
Three chefs labored . . . , 282
Three Poems That Werent Written,
36
Time, 271
Time paints . . . , 201
Time-Saturated, 204
Time-saturated I am and the
sorrow . . . , 204
To Be Continued, 131
To Rise from Ashes, 33
To the Fox, 305
To weave the locks of darkness . . . ,
170
Today my grandma Rachel turned
fteen . . . , 299
Tonight I enumerate silence after
silence deep in the ground . . . ,
255
Tonight I Saw, 108
Tonight I saw her fragments . . . ,
108
Tonight I Yield, 193
Tonight I yield to a gaze . . . ,
193
Tonight suddenly . . . , 47
Toward Evening, 202
Tractors, 262
Train of Thought, 90
Travel, 234
Travelling to Jerusalem on a Moon
Night, 169
Through a lit tunnel, under the
river . . . , 97
Turning to Rest in Sapphos Poems,
210
Tuvia, 159
Two in the morning . . . , 153
Uncle Yerocham was so worried . . . ,

51
Variable Texture, 270
Vegetarian, 52
Very still under leaves, under shut
eyes . . . , 305
Wall Calendar, 25
Water Queen of Jerusalem, The, 171
Waves of Love, 149
Waves of love are logged in
geology . . . , 149
Way to the River, The, 273
We had thirty seconds to charge
the nipple . . . , 262
We live in a difcult time when . . . ,
135
Were sprawled across the cool
stone . . . , 210
We reected at length. Light
ooded . . . , 75
Weve stabilized the emotion . . . ,
234
We will lie in the mud . . . , 46
What justies most of all . . . , 73
Wheel of the Century, The, 142
When he faced the guillotine . . . ,
24
When he was thirty-ve . . . , 69
When She Goes Out Alone, 109
When Soft Angel Plumage, 215
When soft angel plumage sprouted
in my esh . . . , 215
When the blaze caught his body it
didnt happen gradually . . . , 88
When the day comes, father of my
child . . . , 13
When the glass drops . . . , 82
When the Music Subsided, 111
When the music subsided and next
to me longings . . . , 111
When the Nazis came they were

quite polite . . . , 41
When the neighbors opened their
front door . . . , 191
When You Come Lie with Me
Come Like My Father, 167
When You Spread Your Hands,
325
Who is she to talk . . . , 90
Why a Frog, 196
Why Did You Come, 322
Widow, 38
Will Power, 76
Winter, when the man of light
left . . . , 326
With a wooden spoon I scrape . . . ,
63
With your charcoal eyes . . . , 26
Without a shirt she waited . . . , 239
Without my noticing . . . , 16
Woman Becomes Tree, 165
Woman with Pitchfork, 217
Words of darkness, hot as wax . . . ,
9
Yes, 196
Yes, it is true . . . , 319
Yes, the night was full and
crammed. At least . . . , 72
Yesterday, when I sat in the
caf . . . , 207
Yom Kippur on the Sabbath . . . , 19
You and I and a brook . . . , 96
You arrive slightly latea green felt
hat, an elegant jacket . . . , 27
You put on your gorgeous . . . , 281
Youre after a man who doesnt
exist . . . , 115
Youre only twenty . . . , 221
You rose from the sea . . . , 47
You were a eld of breaking
poppies . . . , 176
339
POETRY
P OE T S O N T H E E D G E
An Anthology of Cont emporary Hebrew Poetry

##!"#&"
!'#!$#&%&
#"#introduces four decades of Israels most vigorous poetic voices.

Selected and translated by author Tsipi Keller, the collection showcases a
generous sampling of work from twenty-seven established and emerging
poets, bringing many to readers of English for the first time. Thematically and stylistically innovative, the poems chart the evolution of new currents in Hebrew poetry
that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and, in breaking from traditional
structures of line, rhyme, and meter, have become as liberated as any contemporary
American verse. Writing on politics, sexual identity, skepticism, intellectualism, community, country, love, fear, and death, these poets are daring, original, and direct, and
their poems are matched by the freshness and precision of Kellers translations.
This comprehensive and amazing anthology is a great read best taken slowly, savoring each page of outstanding poetry. Tsipi Keller has had the patience and intelligence to select a stimulating and powerful group of poems, with accurate and very
readable translations.
Shirley Kaufman
#"#is a true masterpiece. The translations are sensitive, wise, graceful, and
insightful; the selection is rich and inviting. What a brilliant achievement!
Miriyam Glazer, American Jewish University
Kellers breathtaking anthology, some twenty years in the making, shows that voices
of contemporary Israeli poetry can be compellingly narrative, elegantly lyrical, elegiac, passionate, eccentric, and even phantasmagoric. Her translations convey the
skepticism, wit, and energy of these poets who speak of loves and breakups, query
their places in Jewish history, contemplate metaphysical questions, and paint pictures
of everyday life in Israel.
Lynn Levin, Drexel University and The University of Pennsylvania
TSIPI KELLER was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the United
States since 1974. Her short fiction and her poetry translations have appeared in many
journals and anthologies, and her novels include #; #; and ! #
##!#. Keller has also translated several poetry collections, including Dan Pagiss
"# " and Irit Katzirs !# " She lives in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A volume in the SUNY series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture
Sarah Blacher Cohen, editor
Cover art by Michael Sgan-Cohen (19441999), acrylic on canvas, 40x40 cm.
SUNY
P R E S S
State University of
New York Press
www.sunypress.edu

Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry

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Poets

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POETS ON THE EDGE

SUNY series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

POETS ON THE EDGE

Selected and translated by Tsipi Keller

Cover image: Michael Sgan-Cohen (19441999), HAOR ROAH, acrylic on canvas,

ISRAEL HAR (from Edge of Darkness and Bread, 1994)

DAVID AVIDAN (from Something for SomebodySelected Poems 19521964)

DAHLIA RAVIKOVITCH (from Mother with Child, 1992)

HEDVA HARECHAVI (from I Only Want to Tell You, 1985)

Imagine, Carving the Sky 109

A Childish Farewell Song to a Prime Minister

RUTH BLUMERT (from Exiles on a Strange Planet, 1991; Acquaintance from

YONA WALLACH (from Appearance, 1985)

The Water Queen of Jerusalem 171

MORDECHAI GELDMAN (from Eye, 1993; The Book of Asking, 1997)

RUTH RAMOT (from Slices of Heaven, 1994; Sealed Waves, 1998)

Room Number Forty 205

DAN ARMON (from Duration, 1986; Footprints, 1989)

*(First line: The wondrous wilting of a ower) 232

MAYA BEJERANO (from Selected Poems, 19721986; Voice, 1987; Beauty Is

RONNY SOMECK (from Rice ParadiseSelected Poems 19761996)

Jasmine. A Poem on Sandpaper 260

AFTERWORD The Poems of Irit Katzir 315

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Translation is the art of revelation. It makes the unknown known.

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What is so unique about Hebrew poetry? Why would a poetry reader

the rst Futurist manifesto: 1. We wish to praise the love of danger,

Spread your wing, wonder-bird, Hebrew idiom! Shake

The imagery here is clearly modernistic, almost la Chagall, but the

One of the famous milestones in this process of change and

Mount Abarim, and Mount Hot, where are the twain

Johanan! Johanan! I heard your voice

The Almighty on the right in the image of an old

Feldman, a scholar of feminist Hebrew literature, [At] the turn of

How should I nish this fragment?

of the contemporary object presented here but also to reect for a

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Yehuda Amichai was born into an orthodox family in Wurzburg,

I Was Not One of the Six Million.

before me the desert, perhaps the Promised Land.

its arms joining the great night all around.

The Precision of Pain and the Blurring of Bliss

I saw a sun dip in the sea, I saw God.

in a soothing, promising voice.

The Jewish Time Bomb

more whole than any perfection,

T. Carmi was born in New York City to a Hebrew-speaking

And Until When?

on my head, yours, on this hand,

and how the two who were one,

A Time for Everything

Monologue of the Deserted (II)

In Memory of Dan Pagis (19301986)

And I thought: Only Dan could have placed these words on

of what happened at his feet.

Monologue in the Twilight of His Life

to my son, sleeping open-mouthed,

Lonely Womans Monologue

Chess at the Seashore

Only after the utter has stopped