List of Publications

"At the Gate", translated by Riva Rubin, Poet, edited by Walter M. Barzelay, March 1971, pp. 9-10.

"At the Entrance to the classroom", translated by Riva Rubin, Poet, edited by Walter M. Barzelay, March 1971, p. 10.

"Falastin", translated by Yishai Tobin, Poetry Newletter, Philadelphia, Fall 1978, p. 12.

"Mother", translated by Yishai Tobin, Poetry Newletter, Philadelphia, Fall 1978, p. 11.

"Round and bald", translated by Yishai Tobin, Poetry Newletter, Philadelphia, Fall 1978, p. 12.

"Steps", translated by Yishai Tobin, Poetry Newletter, Philadelphia, Fall 1978, p. 11.

"Jumping Jacks", translated by Shirley Kaufman, Modern Hebrew Literature 11 Fall/Winter 1985, p. ?

"A Tower in Tevets", translated by Esther Cameron, Seven Gates, 1 , Winter 1985, p. 19.

"Two songs and a silence", translated by Esther Cameron, Seven Gates, 1 , Winter 1985, p. 41.

"I've begun to have my doubts that", translated by Gavriel Levin, The Jerusalem Quarterly, 36 (Summer 1985), p. 61.

"Ah, the terrible lap", translated by Gavriel Levin, The Jerusalem Quarterly, 36 (Summer 1985), p. 60.

"Energy of emigrants", translated by Gavriel Levin, The Jerusalem Quarterly, 36 (Summer 1985), p.59.

"Two poems for a friend", translated by Gavriel Levin, The Jerusalem Quarterly, 36 (Summer 1985), p. 62.

"A Bird", translated by Shirley Kaufamn and Rivka Maoz, Ariel 61 Jerusalem,1985, p. 66.

"Maybe", translated by Shirley Kaufamn and Rivka Maoz, Ariel 61 Jerusalem,1985, p. 67.

"The Paintbrush", translated by Shirley Kaufman and Rivka Maoz, Ariel 61 Jerusalem,1985, p. 66.

"A Bird", translated by Shirley Kaufamn and Rivka Maoz, Ariel 61 Jerusalem,1985, p. 66.

"Maybe", translated by Shirley Kaufman and Rivka Maoz, Ariel 61 Jerusalem,1985, p. 67.

"Kitchen Table", translated by Shirley Kaufman and Rivka Maoz, Poet Lore, 81/2, summer 1986, p. 97.

"Palestine", translated by Shirley Kaufman and Rivka Maoz, , Poet Lore, 81/2, summer 1986, p. 97.

"Fingering", translated by Esther Cameron, The Jerusalem Post Magazine, July 11, 1986, p. ?.

"Cry, Sheep", translated by Tishai Tobin, Without a A Single Aswer: Poems on contemporary Israel, edited by Elaine Marcus starkman and Leah Schweitzer, The Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, California, 1990, p. 129.

"Angel on the Shore", translated by Gavriel Levin, Forward, June 29, 1990, p. 9.

"Commerce", translated by Aloma Halter, Tikkun , March-April 1991, p. 1.

"Morning song", translated by shirley Kaufman, Barnabe Nountain Review 2 (edited by Gerald Fleming), Lagunitas:Califronia, 1996, p. 209.

"An angel on the Beach", translated by shirley Kaufman, Barnabe Nountain Review 2 (edited by Gerald Fleming), Lagunitas:Califronia, 1996, p. 210.

"Negotiation", translated by Jane Hirshfield, Poet Lore 91/3., Fall 1996, p.34.

"Morning song", translated by shirley Kaufman, The Second First Art: Poetry in Translation and Essays on the Art of Translating in Honor of Aaron Kramer, edited by susan L. Rosenstreich, Editions d'autrui: Southold, New York, 1996, p. 13.

"An old poem and twelve thoughts about a dove", translated by Jane Hirshfield, Dryad Press:Washington D.C.1997, pp. 23-26.

"Negotiation", translated by Jane Hirshfield, Dryad Press:Washington D.C.1997, pp. 27-28.

"Haggling", translated by Dom Moraes and Aryeh Sivan, A Chance Beyond Bombs: an anthology of Modern Hebrew Peace Poems, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1998, pp. 20-21.

"An angel on the beach", translated by Shirley Kaufman, State University of new yotk Press: Albany, N.Y., 2000, p. 333.

"Vise", translated by Shirley Kaufman,

"Jaffa, July 1948, translated by Shirley Kaufman, Dreaming the Actual, edited by Miriyam Glazer, State University of New York Press, 2000, p.327.

"Reflections on a dove", translated by Shirley Kaufman, Dreaming the Actual, edited by Miriyam Glazer, State University of New York Press, 2000, pp. 328-330.

"In the Library", translated by Shirley Kaufman, Dreaming the Actual, edited by Miriyam Glazer, State University of New York Press, 2000, pp. 331-332.

"In the Library", translated by shirley Kaufman, The Poem and the World: Book Four, edited by Anshuman Pandey, Seattle, Washington, 2002, p.19-21.

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Poems

Fingering

And in the silent crush of a crowd rushing

a strange woman's hand fingers the fabric

of the dress my mother sewed for me, and asks what it costs.

and she never stops asking, at night,

drawing her cracked nails through the fabric

into my skin

fingering it with the know-how

of the pricked fingers of a near-sighted seamstress

thin-lipped and pale

snipping and snipping.

The Tower of Tevets

"...and the main thing is not to be the least bit afraid"

R. Nachman of Bratslav

A song of the tower which was in Tevets.

A song of the tower of the strength I wish was mine.

The mill-wheel turns and turns

Millstone how many years have we kept quiet.

The people Israel have turned each to his home.

I alone was left on the roof of the tower.

And who would climb the tower in days of toil

in the hot days of toil in whose mind would it rise

to take him from his lot?

In dire straits they were like grains of barley

pressed together like grains of barley in a sack

men and women and all who owned fields

together one hairbreadth from the fire

ground into one by a turn of the millstone

my millstone how many years have we kept quiet.

And the screeching of ravens. And the children.

Agh I screamed on the roof of the tower of Tevets.

There I learned to scream.

Trembling seized the millstone

lightning enterd the iron

galloped in my bowels

my teeth horses in harness

the stone screamed

like a child in the hands

of ancient midwives.

There I wanted to sing my songs.

Each to his home they have turned.

(Published in Seven Gates 1, Jerusalem, Winter 1985, p. 29.)

*

Not long after

a concussion of the soul

the body, off-key, slackens,

the blood, it turns out, flows stunned

toward some blunt alley.

Now, under closed lids,

a rising rustling propels cut-off treetops

that ride cool currents of air

toward the close of heavens.

We

We who have ceased

to say We who have melted away with the sudden snow

of nineteen fifty during the time of the great shortage

we melted like powdered milk into the Brazilian coffee

of the packages that came from America, first food

then clothes, a velvet hat with a veil for the crumpled face

of my berieved mother my mother who weeps

over these disguise costumes piled up

over us still

as we try to sing the songs

of nineteen fifty

and our voices unravel.

Autumn Song

Summer is ending. The dates.

The children, already dark-brown and sticky

for birds and butterflies to eat.

Still in the pale, rough-shelled pomegrenates

an assembly of fitted seeds is hastily

foregathering in crowded cells,

diligently, forcefully filling

with pink acidulous order,

demanding unanimously

to ferment.

See: a host of crowns flush crimson.

My Brother's Funeral

Not on Sunday did they dress me in my Sunday best

And we travelled to Jerusalem not to see the sights.

They bought me flowers that don't grow in the field

and took them to a crowded place.

There the sky escaped

and the sun closed tight its ears

in a blank square a terrible woman

approached with a knife ripped my collar

and another wanted to smash a coffin

screamed that his mother was waiting

scrattched the face cut chunks

tore roared split herself

many owls in black spectacles

shrieked like a locomotive diving without lights

without rails in a forest of crues colliding with cries

if I call to my brother who there who there

will ever hear my voice.

There is

There is death inside me

loke stones in the kidneys

which cause nausea

in certain seasons.

There is death inside me

like lead in the muscles

of the wounded who suffer

before the rain.

There is death inside me

like the tiny splinter of glass

that penetrated her skull in the War

causing intensifying migraines,

a week after the operation she ceased

recognizing her children.

And why not the yearning to mate of a flock of male butterflies?

Kitchen Table

Already midday. In the kitchen

all is laid

on the table face to face

my fork touching your knife.

The edges of my hair close to the vein of your throat.

The fan extracts and infuses to my head

air percolates by yours.

I, too, see the cracks

on the kitchen table, heavy,

more old than new,

I, too, see its thick legs.

Take the knife, slice the bread.

Two Songs for a Friend

1. Through all this

My friend,

in the middle of the night I heard your groaning,

in the morning I saw the blue bruises on your forehead.

As for the pit stuffed with goose feathers

and surrounding women in black,

I too have been pretty close to it.

Now let your swaeting, trembling hand remain in mine,

and close your nostrilquick, this second.

Listen one more minute to the cries of the wils geese.

We shall go on foot

through all this.

2. Silver Foil

They can weigh this down with sousand colossal stone columnes,

they can trample on tis with a thousand pairs of parade boots,

they can spray-paint this with thousand dirty slogans.

My dear friend, for you this will always be

a piece of wrinkled silver foil

that a thousand fingers are carefully smoothing

over the city square and the stairs

as a mirror

in which the columns, the boots, the spray-painted walls

are stood on their heads, topple and writhe,

giving off a very thin ringing sound.

How Love

And in days far away

when we have learned how love

your voice will speak to me as if

on the telephone from a small room

full of sleeping people

treading carefully among them

in the middle of the night

and all my limbs and imps

will be listening.

Two Songs and a Silence

1

This is the song

that will release you from your decade-long silence,

O stranger, pisoner for life.

Not the song about hot rice wine

nor the song about the breasts of the bending woman

nor the song about the effervescent rush of youth.

This is the song about secret disgrace

and the little distractions of the faithful,

this is the song of the game they played

in the town of your birth.

Close your eyes and listen to the alien sound of your voice.

2

I am sitting staring at the puzzle that has been completed,

my fingers feeling, with astonishment, the smooth surface.

All the little cardboard monsters are locked into each other,

impacted for good in the solid Northern Sea beneath stretched cellophane.

I haven't yet uttered a sound since the game started.

(Published in Seven Gates 1, Jerusalem, Winter 1985, p. 41.)

Spreading Out

When I stretch out my hands to caress your heads

the curly, soft hair straightens and coarsens

and the suckling smell which I breathed to intoxication

is mixed with the lees of my evaporating blood.

When I spread out my hands to caress your heads,

they burst from my lap, growing up and further away,

and they remain clinging to the palms of my hands

like first figs gradually maturing.

when I send forth my hands to caress your heads

when I try to grasp them, to hold them to me,

they swell up, the skin on them thickens,

and suddenly it's bristles my fingers meet.

When I open my hands to caress your heads

they scatter in four directions

they attract foxes and butterflies

they encircle the world with scents unknown.

Minuet

Children of spring,

when she walks through the garden

do not sing to her, make no lament.

Do not ask her when leaves will grow,

or how long till the flower.

Those who know have said:

the form of the flower withers and changes,

but the melody always remins in the garden.

And so when she walks through the garden,

dear children of summer,

do not sing to her, make no lament.

And should you see her

leaning upon an old woman's cane,

mouth slightly open, listening

to the cracks spreading through

the fattened earth that waits for winter,

do not sing to her, darling

children of autumn,

make no lament.

They have said: she is Love

They have said: she does not change.

In the Silent Summer Nights

In the silent summer nights

when you dig holes behind doors

to sprout in secret

even an emptying potato

can record

chords:

his soft little potatoes

quenched with milk

are sucking music from each other

in big kisses.

Steps

I'm walking, and my right shoe is squeaking,

so patient, so gently, so wise,

the exact melody

I have not heard in so long of

his steps in this crib swaying

on the sole of my foot

in my shoe that's squeaking today

the very melody of

him who knows where he's going

exactly he knows where he's going

he's going, he's going.

(Published in Poetry Newsletter, Temple University, Fall 1978, p. 11.)

Her Songs

She swallowed all my dreams.

Banknotes were heaped between her breasts.

Brave men and pretty women waited in line

to kiss her seven fat cheeks.

Her songs passed among the crowd

like an Indian cow, mooing.

Her eyes chew the cud of her voice.

No, she was not in heat.

Her mother answered the journalist:

She's polite, that's what counts.

She swallowed my seven skinny dreams.

*

Round and bald it rips me

and escapes

to be free.

Now on its own it can

scratch its nose,

blind its eye.

To cut its nails

you've got to be sly.

Now

When I caress you warn.

when I dress you unfold.

who will judge now

if the baby is crying from cold

or if it's too warm?

How can we decode its breath

when we can no longer shout

and everything is death.

A Dove

When the siren of truce is heard in the moutains

I will fly from the window of the ark

to land on the top of the first

carob tree, the smell of its maleness

will take away for a while

the history of broken nests

and shattered baby doves.

I will quickly return to wandering

with ancient legends of olive branches.

At Night

At night

While I inhale your sweet and sour breath

and you suck my bitterness -

a stubborn rasberry bush sprouts from between our ribs.

With its immature fruit

we feed each other, eyes closed,

leaving signs of red juice on our faces.

Cry, Sheep

Cry, Sheep

Thickheaded in darkness. Cry,

Sheep. You spoiled the Sabbath.

in the industrial area the sand lies clean,

enlightened,

sparking with golden buttons, changing

into a beige suit with poskets.

And to whom and what for?

A sheep closed in a carpentry shop

licking the rolled sawdust, going crazy,

sick for water.

Yea though she walk

through the whole carpentry shop

there isn't a soul in the industrial area

no living voice except her,

spoiling the Sabbath

with bleats full of sawdust.

(Published in Without a Single Answer: Poems of Contemporary Israel,

ed. by Elaine Marcus Starkman and LEah Cshweitzer,

Berkeley, California 1990, p. 129.)

A Pot

And when I woke up I knew:

There's a pot of fish on the fire

and the pot has a lid.

My bed was full of soft and red

pieces of suckling fish

with eyes of Jewish babies.

And when I woke up I knew:

There's a pot on the fire

and the pot has no lid.

In the Library

1

I got up. My legs too. Was I here? Yes.

Make me blind, foreign books

with your acid chalk pages

and artificial light.

Foreign books, help me

to be fog.

2

Light crouches cool on gray windows.

Breath of ancient manuscripts, enamel

pages like orchids illuminated in gold

on the glittering tips of my lacquered

rose fingers leaves shut tight.

Are these the hands

that made me glad

to clean

to hug

to bake

to mend?

3

Just today, more than two years already,

and the drills seem to be calmer,

sounds of things falling hard into wagons

have softened,

only random images still trigger the gun,

every stain from the distance flows red,

just today in the library behind bent backs

catching a glimpse of a pattern

that I once knitted -

not for you, no,

for you I never knitted a sweater -

and how is it I never knitted even one sweater for you?

Didn't I kiss you more than I kissed your big brothers?

And didn't I speak to you more words of love than I spoke

to your brothers, grieve with you, give you

more room than to each of your brothers?

But a sweater, I never knitted a single sweater for you:

I have not even thought of it till now.

You Asked Me

Pained, like an adult, you asked me why I still smoke

and I said why did you stop playing the piano.

And I spoke with you about the difficulties of weaning,

as I would with an adult.

I promised you I wouldn't smoke, and I did keep it.

And you went back to making music of youtself for my sake,

the sounds filled the house with drugs.

Now I try to recover from the pain of the music,

from the feel of your death in my hands, of your life

from the moment I longed to give birth to you,

little yellow laughing duckling, from the sadness

that ate at your eyes facing mine,

from the tenderness, smiles, wisdom,

the silent strength

by which I let you to betray me.

And it's hard now

to make any promise to you,

or keep it.

When I Look at You

My eyes split out of my head, amazed,

when I look at you, Madame Nature.

yeach. Squat, stained, jaws drooping,

old woman, I know you too well.

Waddling with a cane to symphony halls

wrapped in artificial curls,

loaded with American gold-plated chains and rings,

frantic to start a conversation with anyone not interested,

quick to be sorry, to flatter, to boast, to preach -

Do you know you're the one who nursed me?

I suckled red milk from one of your breasts;

milk oozed like a swarm of gray mold from the other.

And which of us suddenly understands why

one of your eyes is green

and the other one - gray.

When I look at you, Madame Nature,

my eyes split out of my head, amazed.

When I finished School

When I finished school I had warehouses downtown

full of cuddles, caresses,

and kisses sewn into velvet and silk

everything packed in kibbutz crates.

Who was thinking of a dowry then? My mother?

Who had a jewelery box? My mother?

Or did I find something at school?

Perhaps the warehouses were rented from books.

Perhaps I inherited velvet from old pictures in the museum

while sitting on the steps (cheap tickets) listening to the flute.

Seven lavender clouds used to jump from behind my back

to cover my eyes with caresses

so I woudn't see the future

theft.

When I Was in School

When I was in school I swore:

I'll marry and never see

your wrinkled face

always envying other mothers.

Oh how many pink-cheeked

vows I made in school!

One morning I ripped the pillow case

embroidered with blue buds, enraged

by your fraudulant plot to stop me from going

on a camping trip with fever.

At noon I shaved my head

and what I felt in the evening when I found out

you'd added a note in your sloppy scrawl

on my love letter to a married man -

I really can't remember now.

I'm too old and my wrinkled face

that always envyies other mothers

is needed to no one but you.

(trans by Shirley Kaufman and Linda Zisquit)

Reflections on a Dove

A blowzy dove. Beak wide open, on a hamsin day

next to the dog's leftover meat.

Pecks, cackles, brawls with the ants.

1

You were fantastic

with your fluttering eyelashes

and delicate neck

all covered in pure

silver.

2

An angel by nature?

It's easy like that

with a dreamy hand

to float shalom.

Why did you wish

to leave through the hatch?

To bring home a medal?

Were you pulled by the pale blue emptiness

that looked like purity?

Wasn't it great to faint from the absolute?

3

Your skin is too white.

Jerusalem's sun

will touch you all day.

You won't be able to sleep

for a week from the sunburn.

4

Two by Two they came out of the ark

blinking.

They didn't start praying right away.

5

You proved the flood did not destroy

the roots of the olive trees.

The root of evil goes deeper into this earth.

On what apple of Sodom are you making love?

On what are you building?

6

To build a nest

to guard the fledgings

from owls

from hawks

from wind in the trees

from lightning

from bees

from the evil eye

from disease

from the plague of the first-born

from death in war

from other doves

from their fledging brothers

and from themselves.

7

And the earth is full of ants,

some flying, some writing, some building nests.

Come in, they'll spread their wings over you

so you can join their acid conversation

and find a family.

8

Count how many children are left.

Learn how to scream.

Your throat will get tougher.

Your voice thick.

9

They said she managed to look like a dove

even in the emergency ward, in spite of

the radiation, the infusions, and all that.

Others spoke of screams

after the treatment ended.

10

Get out of yourself, spoled dove!

Be sharp and piercing.

Vote with your head to the wall.

They taught you to trust only madness.

11

Now turn to the TV:

women from the whole world are denouncing you,

shouting "Arabieh Falastin!"

They are younger, more fastidious than you.

There you are, speaking into the mirror,

ranting about love and peace in a hoarse voice,

pecking, cackling, brawling, quarreling

like a hawk.

12

When did I sit on the warm stairs,

the air full of dandelion seeds,

the dog stretched out next to me well fed and petted.

A blowzy dove, beak wide open, shifting the tin plate

with her beak, very close to me.

The Paintbrush

The brush that painted the sun as a blue bowl of bubbly Hebron glass, full

of cucumber flowers pickled with lots

of crushed garlic and vine leaves picked before

sunrise when a rose colored fox greedy to pounce them

not ready, green, fragile, dripping salt water

on the swaying sky where no white tablecloth is spread

mixes my life with yours on a temporary easel.

(Published in Ariel 61, 1985, p. 66.)

A Bird

I too have a bird in my house

that pecks at my liver every morning

and sings

Why, coward, why to the rock?

Because I love to stroke seaweed like this,

soft as a bird's wing.

(Published in Ariel 61, 1985, p. 66.)

Maybe

Maybe when the heat is not so heavy

she will leave.

Now I can't

even move

make a sign

breathe deeply.

And for a long time I've been grovelling

toward you, a stale froth of waves

that stops in the middle, starts over again,

leaves gifts you don't ask for

on the arching shore, your back

only made to be stroked.

But she's here again,

looking back at herself like Lot's wife

on a dead sea already

thick and oily, I am

floating petrified not toward you.

(Published in Ariel 61, 1985, p. 67.)

Kitchen Table

It's already noon. In the kitchen

everything laid

on the table face to face.

My fork almost touches your knife,

the ends of my hair are close to the vein in your neck.

The fan churns the boiled air

from your head to my head.

I too see the cracks

in the heavy kitchen table,

I too seethe thick legs.

Take the knife, slice the bread.

(Published in Poet Lore vol. 81 No. 2, Summer 1986, p. 97)

Jumping Jacks

1

Take me to the land where people sometimes sing like this.

After that war I don't want anything but

the Land, where people sometimes sing like this.

2

Like Hebrew words in Latin letters -

that's how I read your face, my love

of the past generation.

3

From the hem of your gown I stitched my bathrobe

with pattern of stars.

Is that why my heart is high at night,

when the transient jasmin blooms, climbing among the bouganvilla?

4

My thoughts leave me to caress your body

and my arms rush out as if pulled in a burst of pain

like the hardened teats of a stray cat

running to suckle quickly.

5

Between my lips and my voice

the words of my love are

tulip bulbs

below the pavement

in the winter.

6

I am a pipe.

Put an ear against me.

There is a dull commotion

underground.

Your silence in my hollow

like a siren going through me.

7

To hold you so thin escaping

thin over thin

towers of wet sand grapes

falling in green miracles

on my gaping.

8

A blowzy dove, beak wide open, on a hot dry day

next to the dog's leftover meat.

Pecks. Cackles. Quarrels with ants

like a hawk.

9

A ravenous falcon alredy grips

the dry crack in her heel

to break the skin

to spill her yolks on the ground.

10

All day in front of the mirror I smooth silver foil.

Silver flutes whistle a silly tune.

Before I sleep, empty tin cans make noise

in my head, rattle with me in bed.

11

I follow my footsteps in vain

from oven to coat, from room to rope,

and suddenly to the icebox, to the drawers

that seem to saw through the shadows

of my thighs wandering through the house

searching vor what I've lost.

12

My friend,

edge me toward death

with the pain of illness,

with a surgical knife my follies.

Light up my errors with a big lamp.

Look, like hemorrhage, my excessive love.

13

I won't take anything with me,

not even a guitar.

Only the live heat of your body.

14

The pointing finger

(its memory will protect us) says

it is good

to eat meat at the mourners' meal

and to scream when water enters the lungs.

15

The small finger says:

the aim of illness

is to teach one humility

and to steam up the iron mirror

where each morning he sees his face in terror.

16

Between the iron bars in the station

under skies of kitchen marble,

people lift up their soft bellies,

strain toward their food from the hand of their lord.

17

To live with this tune in peace.

To live with trash, with shouts,

to breathe deeply the exhalations of vanity,

to have this with constancy,

from time to time.

18

I want to call her Soul, and I can't.

I see her falling into the smooth mirror,

crawing in a procession of captives.

I'll try to call her Pride of the Unit.

19

Metaphors stitched in the heart of the world

like a medical instrument forgotten

in the patient's body

in the general commotion of Genesis.

(Published in Modern Hebrew Literature 11, Fall/Winter 1985

Palestine

In this narrow bed

next to a clay wall full of little

tunnels for spiders and lizards,

if I turn over I'll fall into the sea.

In this narrow and hard bed

do you want to know me, habibi,

or to smash my head

and the heads of my infants against the wall?

(Published in Poet Lore, Vol. 81 No. 2, Summer 1986, p. 97)

The Goat

On the bench in the cheap butcher shop

in Bethlehem, Christmas eve,

sat the head, not very large, somewhat curled,

of a black goat

the kind that jumps with light ankles

on the stone hills of the Judean Desert.

Her eye was open

and very

tired.

Her eye was open

and very

weary.

Her eye was open

and in it the world

of slaughteres.

On the sidewalk stood her kid.

An the goat – was she there

Or not?

Translated by Linda Zisquit

The Argument

There are people who invite you to movies,

to a trip in the Judean Desert, who buy a poster,

pearls, a mixer, whisper compliments -

the argument for my father was a form of love,

a form of devotion

a form of igniting.

The argument was the landscape

of his Russian-Jewish heritage.

From the time I began growing breasts we could scream

in the kitchen for hours on matters of absolute truth.

"And that is the difference between you and me",

he would say to Mother in the small hours of the night,

beaten and purified from hours of excited talking

and irrelevant answers.

"And that's what will be written on your tombstone",

Mother would quickly respond

hoping to press on and get him angry.

Afterwards together they carried

the double folding bed.

From this fuss I was born,

out of the foam of those waves.

At the Edge of the Architecture

What am I and who in the distance

at the edge of the complicated architecture

of the Mt. Scopus hallway?

Between marble mountains, walking in the valley

that has no end or beginning

alone walks the person failing

my exam,

Fatima,

her eyes quiet pools of tears

wanting to reach the end of the hallway

and here nearly every step forward leads her a step back

and here each step on the smooth stones

why does it lead me backwards

and I see in the distance a strange animal

I don't think I've ever seen such a thing

her head a lion

her body a bear

her legs a beast

roaring: you failed! you failed!

and I don't cry out

only my eyes drip many tears.

When I was in School

When I was in school I swore:

I would marry and never see

your wrinkled face

always envying other mothers.

Oh, how many pink-cheeked

Vows I made in school!

In the morning I ripped the pillowcase

embroidered with blue buds

enraged

by your fraudulant plot

to stop me from going on a trip with fever.

At noon I shaved my head

and what do you think I felt

in the evening when I found out

that you added a note in your sloppy scrawl

to my love letter to a married man -

I really can’t remember exactly now.

I am too old, and my wrinkled face

that always envies other mothers

is necessary to no one but you.

Translated by Shirley Kaufamn and Linda Zisquit

On the Fence

We'll sit on the bars of the guard-rail

and you'll hug me a little, my Lord.

Don't mind the tears, expectant

as the piles of softness under my dress.

Hug quietly. Don't buy me jewelery of prestige.

I was rejected, then, from all Your favorite stories:

you did not have me rise from the fires,

you did not lose me in translation,

or have my only brother fall in the fields,

or hyenas tear apart the child.

Not into the pit but into

the caldron of boiling iron I jumped.

I became a bell.

I answer phonecalls nicely,

watch my weight and balance,

enjoy food and music.

On the cold iron bars of the will,

beyond all the right stories,

just hug me with softness, my Lord,

and don't mind the tears.

Trnaslated by Linda Zisquit

Angel On the Shore

Now wings of our thoughts belong to one angel

and talk before sleep or when strolling on the shore

and moments of fullness and emptiness

belong to the same angel orphaned of limbs

and temperate of sex

the one we fought against day and night

and used a string of contraceptive

to prevent him from being born

and we swore to commit transgressions

peovided he wouldn't seize us

and bond our legs and heads

and we fled from each other to the edge of hell

and we burned our most precious possessions

until we were reduced to dust and ashes

that wedded the source of tears

and gave brith to mud.

And we sank in mud

and we drowned in mud

and we jerked in mud until

we kneaded a sort of soft angel

barely swaying on its legs,

ignorant of its surroundings

like a duck that waddles on the bank

on a day of a sky without color,

of a sea without a horizon

full of thoughts of longings

for each others with two beaks.

(Published in Forward, June 29, 1990, p. 9.)

The Energy of Emigrants

We had the energy of emigrants.

Acre by acre, goat by goat.

We buried stragglers grown blurred.

Now energies of different sort roam the grounds,

not colorful roosters.

Near the shack covered with black tarpaper

where stood my childhood iron bed

blossoms in shocking pink

the oleander we naively planted as an ornamental tree

esudes strong fragrances and dizzieis the heads of aphids

swooning with delight. Denies

the phony existence of the lilac in the local soil

aflame with fresh, domestic desires.

(Published in The Jerusalem Quarterly 36, Summer 1985, p. 59)

Ah, The Terrible Lap

Ah, the terrible lap of storks unfurling like sails

clearly announces: Fall! And already it won't refuse

the groan of wings beating before morning

beneath the puffed up skin ready to burst

in my ears. Ears! Lips! Down to the roots of my nails

the commotion of take-off

while slices of bread burnt alive in the kitchen

fill with smoke the house asleep in my lap.

(Published in The Jerusalem Quarterly 36, Summer 1985, p. 60)

I've Begun to Have my Doubts That

I've begun to have my doubts that

brown is a maternal color

after so many years of wandering

and poking into the flat brown, which crumbles

and turns grey afternoons oppressive as the weight of a chin resting on the handle of a grubhoe

in the middle of a half-plowed stretch of land.

Today over a cup of coffee

I shared with my daughter the legacy of brown

straining our eyes alike and the frail friendship

which insisted upon growing between us, as olive saplings

from that table.

(Published in The Jerusalem Quarterly 36, Summer 1985, p. 61.)

Two Poems for a Friend

1

My friend,

I heard your moans at night.

I saw the blotches on your brow in the morning.

To the pit stuffed with heaps of goose feathers

and to the women in black posted nearby

I too have edged.

Now put your tremulous hand in my own,

and with the other quickly punch your nostrills shut.

Listen a moment longer to the shrieks of wild geese.

We'll go by foot through all of this.

2

Let them pile a thousand huge stone pillars on it.

Let them trample upon it with a thousand marching boots.

Let them spray it with a thousand dirty slogans.

Dear friend,

for you it will always remain crinkled tinfoil

which thousand fingers carefully straightened

and spread on the square and the stairs

as a mirror

in which pillars, boots, sprayed walls

turn upside down on their heads, collapse, quiver,

tinkle ever so lightly.

(Published in The Jerusalem Quarterly 36, Summer 1985, p. 62.)

Bubble Gum

Meanwhile no one noticed what I was doing by the border fence.

People were busy moving pianos, carpets,

boiling the drinking water.

Other people were walking with their hands up.

This was no dream. My mouth was parched

and the water not yet boiled, so in the meantime

through the border fence I’m trading with another girl

bubble gum from wet mouth to dry one for a slice of bread

with salty American butter,

and the flies on the puss around her eyes

settling on mine for a while.

It was in Jaffa, July 1949,

when refugees from their side of the fence

were walking with their hands up

and refugees from our side

were busy moving pianos, carpets

boiling the drinking water,

which are lukewarm now

translated by Aloma Halter

Refugee

When you gaze at me with a refugee's dark eyes

more and more my womb tightens

in spasms of refusal and my eyes

that see the convoy of your sufferings

are shuttered off from saying: Get thee out

Oh opposite flesh of my flesh

refugee from my charred compassion

bring forth your homeland by your own force.

Palestine

In this narrow bed

by a pitted clay wall

full of spiders and lizards

if I turn over, I'll tumble into the sea.

In this hard and narrow bed

have you come to know me, Ya Habibi,

or to dash my head

and my little ones against the stones?

Show me

Show me the same pictures again

of people inside a car.

I must be ready.

Show me a child's eye gazing

at his brother's pulped face.

Don't cover up the pile

of charred corpses.

I must be ready.

Not in dreams, not before sleep,

as I used to be killed

with my brother in that war

night after night, my innards

spewed up from my belly

insects tickling them

and my voice paralysed.

Show me wide awake. On television.

How a father says jump from the window and run

how a man grabbed his enemy's gun.

Show me it again and again.

I must be ready.

Translated by Aloma Halter

Pink

Across the pile of rags in the Arab market I call out Shalom

as I used to, a pink not my own trying to stick to me,

whose baggy white-and-blue exercise pants are welded under my skin.

The pink uniforms of an Arab girls' school scream at me

with ebullience not my own from the window of a pre-Israli old bus,

a joy not my own gets into me like pink chewing gum

from the mouth of a stranger.

Strange is the taste in my mouth. Am I ill?

My daughter laughed and turned aside her face

as if I'd shown her a pink abcess in my throat.

Two Poems of a Teacher

1 At the Gate

At the usual hour the school bell starts to saw

at the hollow iron posts of my thoughts

and I draw nearer to the stubborn, low gate.

Pupils in their haste, lapping red mist on a stick,

do not need to smell the cold sweat

with which each day you annointed

the hinge of the stubborn, low gate.

Will they, too, in theur time, taste the heartburn?

The school bell rings at the usual hour

sawing my belly from my head

like the first scream of newly born.

My thoughts shrivel.

I'm coming, father. I'm coming nearer

to the stubborn, low gate,

to the place you're always at.

2. At the Entrance to the Classroom

Like horses at the scent of battle

my heels ammer at the entrance to the class

Aha, barbarians! Loud rabble!

Youngsters, red-snouted, yellow-tongued -

What are you to my broken horn?

Blow it on crumpled note-book paper before it snorts.

The beautiful letters loop like hunting-horns

And I hold to them and read the text.

(Published in: Poet, India, March 1971)