Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back The light of the olive in this tree is thick and dark — lost blood flows in it. When I sat under its leaves time killed itself in the tree’s shade. Through all the afternoon hours a figure on the hill watched me, her face covered in a veil —…
Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back All this suffering all the sorrow all this suffering and sorrow in vain all the fear-clenched mothers their eyes disheveled all this sane madness in vain in vain the fathers, all these fathers hiding their hearts pretending in vain all this blood-crazy land in vain, in vain the young faces…
The descendant kings rule over rock-strewn littoral, banked clouds, hyssop hills of Jordan, a shimmer that concedes hope, which is bound unto the other, to the sheer indecipherability of landscape. Believe — some god behind the edged shrubs, the pebbles, and near flat glassiness of sea. Human need contracts, matters little. Curls of viscous foam…
We have to kill them the President said because they are killing us before we can kill them. In that case said the other president, why don’t we kill them yesterday, in which case their children won’t have a chance to grow up. We tried that before said the President, but their children were carrying…
Israel greet me once a month let every being with a soul praise god & his spouse Your wives are your securities a fuselage to die for Open air relentless inventive elation the measure of measure 400 OVERNIGHT You can have free ovaries but it’ll cost ya Can you plan on pleasure or pain? Earn…
in the south where we are busy slaughtering each other. There’s no time for flowers amid burnt bodies and ruins. Scalding summer will pass, autumn will arrive unnoticed. If only an early winter rain would come, send us all indoors, there to stand at shattered thresholds and watch the yellow sky weep and weep for…
(Taken in Warsaw, 1936) I will not infer from your black suit and stiff blanched collar an absolutist’s stance since moot distinctions were your passion, nor read prophecy into your ashen beard though your forehead, pale as a candle, burned, as did the bald dome beneath your silk skullcap. Your terse lips questioned transcendence, your…
For Irving Ladin, died October 2007 It’s different in the house of death. There’s family here too but no one crowds around the bed. They hang back in the shadows waiting for you to come to them. The mother and father you left marinating in their accents whisper their Russian version of the local dialect….
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